They did not disappoint me: I was disconcerted, dazzled, transported. Apart from the rare exceptions I have mentioned, I regarded works of literature as historical monuments which I would explore with more or less interest, which I sometimes admired, but which did not concern me personally. But now, suddenly, men of flesh and blood were speaking to me with their lips close to my ear; it was something between them and me; they were giving expression to the aspirations and the inner rebellions which I had never been able to put in words, but which I recognized. I skimmed the cream of the Sainte-Geneviéve library; with fevered brow, my brain on fire, and my heart pounding with excitement, I read Gide, Claudel, Jammes. I exhausted the resources of Jacques’ private library; I took out a subscription to the ‘Maison des Amis des Livres’, in which Adrienne Monnier, in a long dress of grey home-spun, held court; I was so greedy for reading matter that I couldn’t be satisfied with the two-books-at-a-time rule: I would secretly slip half a dozen or so into my satchel; the difficulty was getting them back on the shelves, and I’m afraid I didn’t get them all put back. When it was fine, I would go and read in the Luxembourg Gardens; I would walk in the sun round the fountains in a state of exaltation, repeating phrases I liked. Often I would install myself in the reading-room of the Institut Catholique which offered me a quiet spot to read in only a few steps from home. It was there, seated at a black desk among pious students and seminarists in long robes, that I read, with tears in my eyes, the novel that Jacques loved above all others and which was called not Le Grand Môle but Le Grand Meaulnes. I found release in reading as once I had done in prayer. Literature took the place in my life that had once been occupied by religion: it absorbed me entirely, and transfigured my life. The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I learnt by heart new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies and I sanctified every circumstance in my existence by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my aspirations were no less sincere on account of that: the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make-believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. For months I kept myself going with books: they were the only reality within my reach.