Today he would deal with satire and irony, try to demonstrate the multiple profundities of Montesquieu in the Lettres Persanes. Out of these notes—these pencil-scrawls, these patches of typing with their interlineations, these scribbled marginalia, these afterthoughts which had become forethoughts, these forethoughts that became afterthoughts—would have to come the urbane and finished products. The notes were the rough quarry from which he must extract the block of marble.