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‘He never stops thinking,’ Herbaud had told me. This didn’t mean that he cogitated over formulas and theories all the time: he had a horror of pedantry. But his mind was always alert. Torpor, somnolence, escapism, intellectual dodges and truces, prudence, and respect were all unknown to him. He was…

‘From now on, I’m going to take you under my wing,’ Sartre told me when he had brought me the news that I had passed. He had a liking for feminine friendships. The first time I had ever seen him, at the Sorbonne, he was wearing a hat and talking animatedly to a great gawk of a woman student who I t…

How was it that I managed to fit in with them so quickly? Herbaud had taken care not to shock me, but when they were all together the three ‘comrades’ didn’t pull their punches. Their language was aggressive, their thought categorical, their judgements merciless. They made fun of bourgeois law and …

Sometimes we would abandon the Cité for Nizan’s study. He lived with his wife’s parents in a house in the rue Vavin whose façade was covered with glazed earthenware tiles. On the walls of his study there was a large portrait of Lenin, a Cassandre poster and the Venus of Botticelli; I admired his ul…

I returned to Paris, dressed in heavy mourning, wearing a hat swathed in black crêpe georgette; but all the chestnuts were in flower, the tarmac was soft underfoot, and I could feel through my dress the gentle force of the sun. The fair was on in the Esplanade des Invalides: I strolled about there …