In October, while the Sorbonne was closed, I spent my days in the Bibliothèque Nationale. I had obtained permission to have my lunch out: I would buy bread and rillette and eat them in the gardens of the Palais Royal while watching the petals of the late roses fall; sitting on the benches, navvies would be munching thick sandwiches and drinking cheap red wine. If it was raining, I would take shelter in the Café Biard with bricklayers eating out of messtins; I was delighted to escape from the ritual of family meals; by reducing food to its essential elements I felt I was taking another step in the direction of freedom. I would go back to the library; I was studying the theory of relativity, and was passionately interested in it. From time to time I would look up at the other readers and lean back proudly in my armchair: among these specialists, scholars, researchers, and thinkers I felt at home. I no longer felt myself to be rejected by my environment; it was I who had rejected it in order to enter that society – of which I saw here a cross-section – in which all those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know, to understand, to express itself: I was engaged in a great collective enterprise which would release me for ever from the bonds of loneliness. What a victory! I would settle down to work again. At a quarter to six, the superintendent’s voice would solemnly announce: ‘Gentlemen – we shall – very soon – be – closing.’ It was always a surprise, after leaving my stuthes, to come back to the shops outside, the lights, the passers-by, and the dwarf who sold bunches of violets near the Théâtre Français. I would walk slowly, giving myself up to the melancholy of evening and of my return home.