[...] Life was matter of fact and magnificent. She was irresistible.

Our love tore our hearts apart and from the very beginning carried its own seeds of destruction.

We left on I September 1949, early in the morning, and were in Paris by midday. We booked in at a reputable family hotel on rue Ste-Anne, a narrow turning off Avenue de I’Opera. The room was rectangular like a coffin, the beds not alongside each other but in single file, the window facing out on to a cramped courtyard. If one leant out, one could see a patch of the white-hot summer sky six floors up. The air in the courtyard was musty, cold and damp; there were some windows in the asphalt to let light into the hotel kitchen, where one could see numerous white-clad people moving about like maggots; out of this chasm rose the stench of refuse and cooking smells. For further details, please refer to the lovers’ room in The Silence.