‘He never stops thinking,’ Herbaud had told me. This didn’t mean that he cogitated over formulas and theories all the time: he had a horror of pedantry. But his mind was always alert. Torpor, somnolence, escapism, intellectual dodges and truces, prudence, and respect were all unknown to him. He was interested in everything and never took anything for granted. Confronted with an object, he would look it straight in the face instead of trying to explain it away with a myth, a word, an impression, or a preconceived idea: he wouldn’t let it go until he had grasped all its ins and outs and all its multiple significations. He didn’t ask himself what he ought to think about it, or what it would have been amusing or intelligent to think about it: he simply thought about it. Thus he was always the despair of the aesthetes who were all yearning for elegant elaboration. A couple of years ago, having heard him give an analysis of a philosophical work, Riesmann, who was dazzled by Baruzi’s verbal quibbling, had told me sadly: ‘He has no soul!’ That same year, giving a talk on ‘classification’ his scrupulous honesty had put our patience to the test: but in the end he had compelled our interest in his subject. He always intrigued people who were not afraid of something new, for though he never tried to be original, he never fell into the trap of conformity. The freshness and dogged tenacity of his perceptions grasped the very essence of things in all their lively profusion. How cramped my little world seemed beside this exuberantly abundant universe! Later, it was only certain madmen who could inspire in me a similar sense of humility when they discovered in a rose-petal a tangle of murky intrigues.