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Synopsis

Childhood is pitiless because it does not understand, for nothing is more cruel than ignorance. None of my madcaps will heed the sufferings of the insect, a melancholy galley-slave chained to a cannon-ball. These artless minds find amusement in torture. I dare not always call them to order, for I admit that I on my side am also guilty, though I am ripened by experience, to some extent civilized and beginning to know a thing or two. They inflict suffering for the sake of amusement and I for the sake of information: is it not really the same thing? Is there a very definite line of demarcation between the experiments of knowledge and the puerilities of childhood? I cannot see it.

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