... who was sick, sick, sick.

..it was only in appearance that I sat alone; my own thoughts could not withstand the torrent of words on which for hours past I had let myself be carried along: I went on turning out words and sentences which might have impressed...; to make the game more enjoyable, I even played the parts of the absent others, asking myself fictitious questions so designed that, in answering them, I could show off the brilliance of my banter. Silent as it was, this exercise was a real conversation and not a form of reflection; my solitude was a mental drawing room scene, in which imaginary interlocutors and not myself were in charge of my speech...
(In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust)