I spent the following three days mostly locked in my room, nursing my broken jaw and watching fearfully through the window. Early in the mornings, I sneaked into the canteen and hurriedly brought my food to my room. There was no doubt Balzac had mistaken me for a writer with whom he had some previous issue. Maybe this writer had pointed out his brutishness and for that reason, father and writer were joined in his mind. Now, you may understand why I suspected your hand in his mistake. First of all, he had demonstrated a faulty memory of my appearance. And secondly, I am an illustrator, not a writer. Even at this very moment, recording this is torturous. Quite frequently, I struggle with my expressions and wonder if there is, perhaps, an idiom from some other language that might work better.
