YOU are a University man, he began. You must forgive me if the opening of my story is not free from a suggestion of bitterness against the University of which I was never a member. No doubt my feelings are without justification, since to the fact that I was never admitted I owe memories which, after all, I would not exchange for a chair at the Sorbonne.
I took the course marked out for those with some intelligence and no money, and went in for scholarships. That means I undertook, somehow, to get through examinations every year, to acquire a certain habit of mind and with it, as climax, a teacher's diploma and a post in a provincial school.
At first I justified the hopes reposed in me by the Council-General of my Department. My scholarship at the Mont-de-Marsan school was succeeded by another in advanced rhetoric at the Henry IV. school. There it was that in 1912 I tried to get into the École Normale Supérieure. Thirty-five candidates were accepted. I came out thirty-seventh. By way of consolation prize I was offered a scholarship at the Faculté des Lettres of Bordeaux University.
I then did something which met with disapproval from the few friends who took any interest in me. During my year as a boarder I had glimpsed Paris as a convict sees green fields through the bars of his cell. I remember myself as a penniless schoolboy walking in the Champs-Elysées one Grand-Prix day in June. All the millionaires were returning home from the races. Each of the cars that flashed down the avenue in a brilliant stream cost ten times more than my poor self had cost since I came into the world. A wonderful lemon and mauve light flooded the scene. I was dazzled. This vision of extravagance inspired me with none of the sentiments that turns the underdog into a rebel.
If only I could have my share some day! "Balzac is an excellent realist," my professor of rhetoric used to splutter out. And if that narrow-minded but honest old fellow said so, it vouched for the truth of those adventures of young provincial heroes who, rather than accept insignificance in an obscure corner of their native land, have come to the Great City, tamed her and made her the submissive hand-maid of their desires.
And now they were proposing to send me to the end of the earth. I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Well, we should see!
Accordingly I resigned my scholarship and decided to enrol myself at the Sorbonne with a view to taking my licence ès lettres. A voice within said: "Do not enter the University, but do not despise its degrees. They are only useful when you have not been there. Outside they are excellent blinds."
In a year I had taken my licence, living on the lessons I managed to give here and there, and imbibing from these tasks an ever-keener longing for freedom. But in the end I felt myself beaten, and resigned myself to the fate I had despised. I entered for a scholarship in history, asking for Bordeaux. And I bade farewell to Paris.
The Consultative Committee of Public Education, whose duty it is to decide in these matters, usually met at the beginning of October. I spent the intervening two months at a fishing village in the Landes, at the house of an old curé (it sounds dull, but it's true), who opened his poor house to me in memory of my parents, whom he had known.
It was there, my friend, that I passed the most peaceful days of my life. I was free to roam at will through the great woods of the district, with no other appointments beyond meal-times. For the first time my reading was confined to such things as did not figure in an examination syllabus or the annual competition, and my mind could take in undistracted the glorious miracle of the dying season.