He was the very paradox itself in the meaning of the word I perceived at that time. I could not look at him without feeling that strange sensation of unreality that sometimes occur in our night dreams or in uncontrollable situations, yet he was natural as anything. Perhaps, that feeling of unreality was caused by too much artifice that I saw around me and was used to. He seemed too sincere to believe, and too self-possessed to suspect false or secrecy, yet he could shock people by bursting out laughing when he was expected to be frightened or confused, and by sudden severity of the eyes looking rather inside his own self just in the pitch of merriment. That was he, combining rationalism of adulthood and spontaneity of childhood, fighting by means of laugh his own pain and perceiving like nobody else that of the others. And ..he was only thirteen.