Power engenders the evil-minded who ill-treat the needy in all parts of the world.

For whom, I asked myself innocently, were the riches and dominions that the English conquered and held on to at any price in the most remote corners of the planet? The neighborhoods which succeeded one another interminably down the narrow cobbled streets were not inhabited by the beneficiaries of those enterprises.

For the one who writes it . . . a story is like a mirror.