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had found his true vocation. He devoted all his leisure to comedy and mime. On the very eve of his marriage, he acted in a play. As soon as he had returned from the honeymoon he put Mama on the stage, where her beauty made up for her lack of experience. I have already mentioned that every year, at Divonne-les-Bains, they took part intheatrical performances given by a company of amateurs. They often went to the theatre. My father subscribed to Comédia, the theatrical magazine, and kept up to date with all the back-stage gossip. Among his intimate friends was an actor from the Odéon. During his convalescence in the hospital at Coulommiers, he wrote and played in a revue in collaboration with another patient, the young singer Gabriello, who was often invited to our house. Later on, when he no longer had the means to keep up a gay social life, he still found opportunities to tread the boards, even if it was only an affair in a church hall.
    His singular individuality came out to the full in this insatiable passion for the theatre. In other respects, my father was a true representative of his period and his class. He considered the re-establishment of the monarchy a Utopian dream; but the Republic only filled him with disgust. Without actually subscribing to L’Action Française, he had many friends among the Camelots du Roi * and he admired Maurras and Léon Daudet. He would not hear any criticism of the nationalist movement in politics; if someone were sufficiently ill-advised to discuss it, he would laugh uproariously and refuse to take part: his love for his native land was above and beyond all arguments and all words: ‘It’s my only religion,’ he used to say. He detested foreigners, and was indignant that Jews should be allowed to take part in the government of the country; he was as convinced of Dreyfus’ guilt as my mother was of the existence of God. He read Le Matin and flew into a temper one day because one of our Sirmione cousins had brought a copy of L’Œuvre into the house: ‘That rag!’ he called it. He considered Renan to be a great thinker, but he respected the Church and was horrified by the bills passed by Émile Combes. His private morality was based upon the cult of the family; woman, in her role as mother, was sacred to him; he demanded the utmost fidelity from married women and all young girls had to be innocent virgins, but he was prepared to allow great liberties to men, which led him to cast an indulgent eye upon women known as ‘fast’. As is nearly always the case with idealists, he was sceptical almost to the point of cynicism. He responded to Cyrano with quivering emotion, enjoyed Clément Vautel, delighted in Capus, Donnay, Sacha Guitry, Flers, and Callavet. Both nationalistand man about town, he knew the value both of grandeur and of frivolity.
    While I was still very small, he had won me over by his gaiety and gift of the gab; as I grew older, I came to admire him for more serious reasons: I was amazed at his culture, his intelligence, and his infallible good sense. At home, his pre-eminence was undisputed, and my mother, younger than he by eight years, willingly took second place. It was he who had introduced her to life and the world of books. ‘The wife is what the husband makes of her: it’s up to him to make her someone,’ he often said. He used to read aloud to her Taine’s Les Origines de la France contemporaine and Gobineau’s L’Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines. He had no overweening pretensions: on the contrary, he prided himself on knowing his limitations. He brought back from the front subjects for short stories which my mother found delightful but which he didn’t develop any further for fear of writing something banal. This modesty gave proof of a lucidity of mind which authorized him to pass final judgements on any case in question.
    As I grew up, he paid more and more attention to