Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only to his friends. He 
has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends but only to himself 
and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself and 
every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he 
is the greater the number of such things in his mind. Anyway I have only lately determined 
to remember some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them even with a 
certain uneasiness. Now when I am not only recalling them but have actually decided to write 
an account of them I want to try the experiment whether one can even with oneself be perfectly 
open and not take fright at the whole truth. I will observe in parenthesis that Heine says that a 
true autobiography is almost an impossibility and that man is bound to lie about himself.