It was a great relief to me not to see Jacques any more; I was no longer torturing myself over him. The first rays of spring sunshine were taking the nip of winter out of my blood. While I continued to work hard, I decided that I would have a little amusement. I went fairly often to the cinema in the afternoons; I usually went to the Studio des Ursulines, the Vieux-Colombier, and the Ciné-Latin; this was a little hall with wooden seats situated behind the Panthéon; a piano accompanied the films; the seats weren’t dear and they showed revivals of the best films of the last few years; it was there that I saw The Gold Rush and many other Chaplin films. On certain evenings my mother would accompany my sister and me to the theatre. I saw Jouvet in Le Grand Large, in which Michel Simon was making his first appearance, Dullin in La Comédie du bonheur and Madame Pitoëff as St Joan. I used to look forward to these outings for days; they irradiated my week. I can tell how much importance I attached to them when I think of how hardly the austerity of the first two terms weighed upon me. Now, during the daytime, I would visit all the exhibitions, and go for long prowls round the galleries of the Louvre. I would wander all over Paris, my eyes no longer brimming with tears, but looking at everything. I loved those evenings when, after dinner, I would set out alone on the Métro and travel right to the other side of Paris, near Les Buttes Chaumont, which smelt of damp and greenery. Often I would walk back home. In the boulevard de la Chapelle, under the steel girders of the overhead railway, women would be waiting for customers; men would come staggering out of brightly lit bistros; the fronts of cinemas would be ablaze with posters. I could feel life all round me, an enormous, ever-present confusion. I would stride along, feeling its thick breath blow in my face. And I would say to myself that after all life is worth living.