scream: he had encountered a python. With loudly beating heart and clammy palms I witnessed the grim tragedy: the serpent devoured good old Bob! This story obsessed me for a long time. The mere idea of being swallowed alive was enough to make my blood run cold; but I should have been less shaken if I had disliked the victim. Bobâs frightful death made nonsense of all the rules of life: it was obvious, now, that anything could happen.
Despite their conventionality, my books helped to broaden my horizons; besides, I was charmed to be an apprentice to the sorcery that transmutes printed symbols into stories; and it was natural that I should want to reverse the magical process. Seated at a little table, I would transfer to paper sentences that were winding about in my head: the white sheet would be covered with violet blotches which purported to tell a story. The silence all round me in the room took on an aura of solemnity: I felt I was officiating at a solemn rite. As I did not look to literature for a reflection of reality, I never had the idea that I might write down my own experiences or even my dreams; the thing that amused me was to manipulate an object through the use of words, as I once used to make constructions with building-blocks; only books, and not life in all its crudity, could provide me with models: I wrote pastiche. My first work was entitled The Misfortunes of Marguerite. The heroine, from Alsace, and an orphan to boot, was crossing the Rhine with a brood of sisters and brothers in order to escape to France. But then I was piqued to learn that the river doesnât run where it ought to have, and my novel was abandoned. So then I dished up in a slightly different form La Famille Fenouillard which we all admired very much in our house: Monsieur and Madame Fenouillard with their two little daughters were a sort of blue-print for our own family. One evening Mama read to Papa my new story, which I had entitled La Famille Cornichon. It made her laugh, and he had smiled his approval. Grandpapa presented me with a volume bound in a yellow cover whose pages were entirely blank; Aunt Lili copied my story into this little book in her neat convent script: I gazed with pride upon this almost real object which owed its existence to me. I composed two or three other works which did not have quite the same success. Sometimes I contented myselfwith inventing titles for my future works. When we went to the country, I would play at being a bookseller; I entitled the silvery leaf of the birch The Azure Queen, and the varnished leaf of the magnolia Flower of the Snows; I arranged some scholarly displays of my stock. I wasnât sure whether when I was grown-up I wanted to write books or sell them, but in my view they were the most precious things in the world. My mother subscribed to a circulating library in the rue Saint-Placide. Impassable barriers prohibited my entry into those book-lined corridors which seemed to extend to infinity like the tunnels in the Métro. I admired the old ladies in their whalebone collars who were able to spend the rest of their days handling the volumes in their black bindings with titles displayed on a red or orange rectangle on the spine. Buried away in the silence, and masked by the sombre monotony of their bindings, all the words in the world were there, waiting to be deciphered. I dreamed of shutting myself away in those dusty avenues, and never coming out again.
About once a year we went to the Châtelet theatre. Alphonse Deville, the city councillor to whom my father had been secretary in the days when they had both been lawyers, used to place at our disposal the box reserved for members of the city council. So I saw La Course au bonheur and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours , and other spectacular productions. I loved the red curtain, the lights, the scenery, and the flower ballet; but the adventures taking place on the stage were of only minor interest to me. The actors
Despite their conventionality, my books helped to broaden my horizons; besides, I was charmed to be an apprentice to the sorcery that transmutes printed symbols into stories; and it was natural that I should want to reverse the magical process. Seated at a little table, I would transfer to paper sentences that were winding about in my head: the white sheet would be covered with violet blotches which purported to tell a story. The silence all round me in the room took on an aura of solemnity: I felt I was officiating at a solemn rite. As I did not look to literature for a reflection of reality, I never had the idea that I might write down my own experiences or even my dreams; the thing that amused me was to manipulate an object through the use of words, as I once used to make constructions with building-blocks; only books, and not life in all its crudity, could provide me with models: I wrote pastiche. My first work was entitled The Misfortunes of Marguerite. The heroine, from Alsace, and an orphan to boot, was crossing the Rhine with a brood of sisters and brothers in order to escape to France. But then I was piqued to learn that the river doesnât run where it ought to have, and my novel was abandoned. So then I dished up in a slightly different form La Famille Fenouillard which we all admired very much in our house: Monsieur and Madame Fenouillard with their two little daughters were a sort of blue-print for our own family. One evening Mama read to Papa my new story, which I had entitled La Famille Cornichon. It made her laugh, and he had smiled his approval. Grandpapa presented me with a volume bound in a yellow cover whose pages were entirely blank; Aunt Lili copied my story into this little book in her neat convent script: I gazed with pride upon this almost real object which owed its existence to me. I composed two or three other works which did not have quite the same success. Sometimes I contented myselfwith inventing titles for my future works. When we went to the country, I would play at being a bookseller; I entitled the silvery leaf of the birch The Azure Queen, and the varnished leaf of the magnolia Flower of the Snows; I arranged some scholarly displays of my stock. I wasnât sure whether when I was grown-up I wanted to write books or sell them, but in my view they were the most precious things in the world. My mother subscribed to a circulating library in the rue Saint-Placide. Impassable barriers prohibited my entry into those book-lined corridors which seemed to extend to infinity like the tunnels in the Métro. I admired the old ladies in their whalebone collars who were able to spend the rest of their days handling the volumes in their black bindings with titles displayed on a red or orange rectangle on the spine. Buried away in the silence, and masked by the sombre monotony of their bindings, all the words in the world were there, waiting to be deciphered. I dreamed of shutting myself away in those dusty avenues, and never coming out again.
About once a year we went to the Châtelet theatre. Alphonse Deville, the city councillor to whom my father had been secretary in the days when they had both been lawyers, used to place at our disposal the box reserved for members of the city council. So I saw La Course au bonheur and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours , and other spectacular productions. I loved the red curtain, the lights, the scenery, and the flower ballet; but the adventures taking place on the stage were of only minor interest to me. The actors
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