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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 …

[...] Forgetting that I had been immediately shocked by the middle-class banality of Jacques’ liaison, I blamed myself for having condemned him in the light of purely abstract principles. In fact, I was lost in a dark tunnel, battling against shadows, brandishing the useless sword of an ideal I no …

[...] with what blind obstinacy I had deceived myself! It was I alone who had built up the image of our friendship over the last three years; I still clung to it today because of the past, and now the past was nothing but a lie. Everything was falling to pieces. I felt I wanted to burn all my boats…