He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, “Blessed be the womb
that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck—the paps especially.

When you said just now, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that is
at the root of it all,’ you pierced right through me by that remark,
and read me to the core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that
I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say,
‘Let me really play the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for
you are every one of you worse than I am.’ That is why I am a buffoon.
It is from shame, great elder, from shame; it’s simply
over‐sensitiveness that makes me rowdy. If I had only been sure that
every one would accept me as the kindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord,
what a good man I should have been then!