‘All that my story narrates, the meetings and partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded exactly as they happened. I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture. (Location 703)
Note: Something in this touches me and I am not exactly sure what it is. The author clearly has a low opinion of those comedies he describes and wishes to distinguish his own writing from that of the comedies. So this section suggests a beauty in the realism of the losses and joys he describes and this is touching. He also in the following paragraph suggests that the realion may be of consolation and indeed it may.
