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grandfather’s. And I noticed that, on her death-bed, my mother’s too had become Roman. Too many inner storms, sufferings, attacks of doubt, rebellions suppressed by sheer force, cudgellings of fate, have wrinkled my forehead, dug a deep crease between my eyebrows, weighted down my eyelids, slackened my hollow cheeks, turned down the corners of my mouth, in such a way that if I lean over a low mirror I see my mask separating itself from the bone and taking on a shapeless form. My beard sprouts white. My hair, while losing its thickness, has kept its rebellion. This has resulted in a tangle of locks growing in all directions which cannot be combed. If they are smoothed down they give me a seedy look. If they stand on end this hirsute coiffure looks like a sign of affectation.
    My teeth overlap. In brief, on a body neither tall nor short, slim and lean, equipped with feet and hands that are admired because they are long and very expressive, I carry an unrewarding head. It gives me a false arrogance. This false arrogance comes from a desire to conquer the embarrassment I feel at showing myself as I am, and its quickness indisappearing from the fear that it might be mistaken for real arrogance.
    This results in too swift a transition from reserve to effusion, from self-assurance to awkwardness. Hatred is unknown to me. I forget injuries so completely that I am apt to smile at my enemies when I meet them face to face. Their astonishment is a cold douche and wakes me up. I don’t know which way to look. I am astonished that they remember the wrong they did to me, which I had forgotten.
    It is this natural bent to live in accordance with the Gospels that draws me away from dogma. Joan of Arc is my great writer. No one finds truer expression than she does in form or in substance. * Without any doubt she would have been blunted had she adopted a style. As she is, she is style itself, and I never tire of reading and re-reading the reports of her trial. Antigone is my other saint. Those two anarchists measure up to the seriousness I like, which Gide denies in my work, my own brand of seriousness that does not conform to what is usually called by this name. It is that of the poet. Scholars of every age scorn it. If it makes them jealous, without them admitting it to themselves, they may go to the length of crime. Voltaire, Diderot, Grimm only display an attitude as old as the world and one which will only disappear with me. One that is opposed to poets and turns against them curved weapons, very terrible at close range.
    Rousseau has left bloody traces of this man-hunt all theway to Hume, where the kill was to take place. Let none believe that such relentlessness evaporates. Something remains. Rousseau will always be an instance of persecution mania. He had it. But he was given cause for it. As well blame the stag at bay for using its horns.
    * Glory through the medium of a minority can only be the prerogative of artists. This system would not work for politicians, but sometimes pride induces them to take the risk. Failing unanimity, the majority harms them. So then they fall back on this minority which, during their term of office, would not have been strong enough. The case of Joan of Arc is different. Her ballot is small. She has only three voices. However, they count. Joan of Arc is a poet.

ON MY ESCAPES
    I FIND THE SOURCE OF THAT FEAR OF THE CHURCH , which drives me towards Joan of Arc, in her trial and in
Les Provinciales
. Reading this work has always filled me with consternation, as has the fact that a mind like Pascal’s, even if he had to plead the cause of the just, could consent to examine such balderdash.
    Several people have dispelled my fear, among them Jacques Maritain and Charles Henrion, for indeed the respect which they inspire brings one’s soul to its knees. But the singular quality they have is subordinated to a plurality, to a narrow rule which they make boundless, into which we are dragged by our faith in