Everybody's Autobiography Read Online Free PDF

after war broke out in Morocco and the news came to Belley that the lieutenant was a prisoner. Alice Toklas’ conscience troubled her, mine did not trouble me but hers troubled her and then later came the news that he was not a prisoner and nothing happened to him and Alice B. Toklas was very relieved about him but later considerably later she would not have been sorry if he had been taken forever, and this when we came to know all about what a notary does.
    We had been very peaceful in Bilignin for two years and then the lieutenant came back, and he wanted to sell us the next piece of his lease that he had not got because we had taken the end of his and yet he said he wanted to take as much furniture out as he wanted to furnish the house he was to take elsewhere because he was no longer to be stationed in Belley, and he wanted the piano and I like to improvise on a piano I like to play sonatinas followed by another always on the white keys I do not like black keys and never two notes struck by the same hand at the same time because I do not like chords, but most of the time I have no piano and I do very nicely without it and I was not there when the lieutenant and his wife demanded the piano which was part of the furnishing for which we were paying, and Alice Toklas refused the piano to them and everything else to them for which we were paying and then they said that in that case they would take the house back. When I came back I had been out walking with the dogs everything was in confusion and I said I will rush to the notary, hisoffice was closed but I made him see me any way and after I told him everything he said the lieutenant was waiting to see him too and tell him everything. Monsieur Saint Pierre the notary is a large fair man whose family like many of the notary families in France and particularly near Lyon have papers to show that they have been notaries or something like that since the eleventh century so they know all about what a notary should do. He calmed me and he calmed him although there was a wall between and he the lieutenant was in the wrong because as an officer in the army he could not rent two houses in France, he could own two but he could not rent two so if he was going to rent another one he could not continue to rent Bilignin so there we were, and if we would give him his furniture sooner our landlord would give us other furniture and make out a lease for us and everything and slowly everything calmed down and we had the furniture out of the home of Brillat-Savarin because our landlord had inherited that house from the heirs of Brillat-Savarin and after a great deal of excitement everything was calm, the notary loaned us his clerk so that the lieutenant and his wife would be peaceful about the inventory and finally they left behind them a cavalry saber, and that is there yet and there is another piano that was left over not from Brillat-Savarin but from very nearly Brillat-Savarin and does very nicely to play sonatinas followed by another on.
    So that is what a notary is and his sons there is always one as there are ministers’ sons remember Cummings is one, but anyway there is always a notary’s son they have a violence in freedom but they are never free, that is what it is to be a notary’s son. Jean Cocteau is one, Foch was one, Bernard Faÿ is one and the other day a lot of people were here and Marcel Duchamp and somebody said or he did that Marcel Duchamp was a notary’s son oh said I that explains everything. Everything said Marcel and everybody burst out laughing but it is true it does, and Dali is a notary’s son and this is a history of him.
    Dali well he is not the most important surrealist and yes yes in a way he is.
    He came to Paris quite young from the north of Spain. As I say, since the twentieth century painting has been Spanish, as Picasso says he likes Dali because Dali, like himself, and that is Spanish bases everything on his own ignorance, they