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“As I say, I knew him well: it was I who, twenty years before, had got him his first scholarship in Paris. I had several times, in those distant days, sent him money taken from my own meager pay, in response to pressing letters, and of course he had never forgiven me for that. I did not blame him: I preferred ingratitude to servility. Later — much later — he had toured my territory as a member of Parliament and, on his return to Brazzaville, had had a great deal to say about me: apparently, I wasn’t doing anything to ‘free the backward tribes from the servitude of the past/ In that, too, he was right: I am in no hurry to do so. On the contrary, I have a more and more irresistible longing not only to preserve intact the customs and rites of the African forest, but sometimes even to share in them myself.” — Romain Gary