Grandmother says to us:

- Sons of a ****!

People say to us:

-Sons of a Witch! Sons of a ****!

Others say:

-Idiots! Hooligans! Filthy Kids! Asses! Dirty Pups! Pigs! Little Devils! Bastards! Little squirts! Gallows birds!'

When we hear these words, our faces get red, our ears buzz, our eyes hurt, our knees tremble.

We don't want to blush or tremble any more, we want to get used to abuse, to hurtful words.

We sit down at the kitchen table opposite one another and, looking each other in the eyes, we say more and more terrible words. One of us says:

-Shit! Arse-hole!

The other one says:

-Bugger! Sod!

We go on like this until the words no longer reach our brains, no longer reach even our ears.

We exercise in this way for about half an hour a day, then we go out walking in the streets.

We contrive to have people insult us, and we observe that we have now reached the stage where we don't care anymore.

But there are also the old words:

Mother used to say to us:

-My darlings! My loves! My joy! My adorable little babies!

When we remember these words, our eyes fill with tears.

We must forget these words because nobody says such words tu us now and because our memory of them is too havy a burden to bear,

So we begin our exercise again, in a different way:

-My darlings! My loves! I love you... I shall never leave you... I shall never love anyone but you... Forever... You are my whole life...

By force of repetition, these words gradually loose their meaning, and the pain they carry in them is assuaged.