Some biographies generate in us moderns an effect similar to the one we experience when, after getting bored with some trifle or complaining about life, we meet a homeless person. Because, in fact, some of the most famous names in universal literature have been beggars themselves—famous, by the way, not because of their material condition, but because of the greatness of their works. And then we discover how incapable we have become of enduring misery, since little things bother us a lot, and a fraction of the adversity endured by so many of our ancestors would be enough to wipe us out. At least the embarrassing is useful.