“Dear Marcel Proust,
I find myself obliged to inform you that you have made a mistake about me. You have misunderstood me. And your mistake is twofold. I mean, you have made the wrong mistake. And I want to enlighten you, because it is beginning to get dramatically late in our lives, about the nature of your misstep. What do you mean by my modesty? Where did you find any trace of it? I am not, contrary to what you claim, the author of In Search of Lost Time, not because this assertion would be factually incorrect, but simply because I did not desire it to be so. One can show just as much ambition in not doing as in doing.
I bid you farewell, sorrowfully, without subtracting anything from my friendship,
Félicien Marboeuf”