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PARTISAN REVIEW
of the world and in their reading, which fused them into a superior
impenetrable couple, or when, as an act of provocation, they pinned
Mussolini's portrait on a wall of their room,
17
and even when, a little
too high and and a little too merry, they provoked each other into a
heated discussion, at La Baronne's - a rather banal cafe on the Rue
Guy-Lussac, where they plotted most of their pranks by phone and
which they cherished because it afforded them the luxury of answer–
ing, whenever questioned as to where they had been spending their
time: "But where else, La Baronne!"
The Nitre-Sarzan cell will split without drama or hatred, but
rather with the languor of a slow drifting apart, as often happens
with certain couples, when silence builds up and each turns natur–
ally toward his own interests and away from the other with both de–
termination and fondness. Sartre developed other friendships and,
during Nizan's trip to Aden, lived with Aron and Pierre Guille. With
Aron, he shared the status of not being on a scholarship, four stu–
dents in their class having been judged, given the financial resources
of their families, as too well-off to receive the modest stipend of 100
francs a month that their classmates used as pocket money. Lecoeur,
Berard, and the other two received only free room and board. But,
like the others, they also went "tapir chasing," a favorite sport of
most Normaliens, looking for private tutees to help them make ends
meet by teaching Latin, English, or literature. That's how Nizan
ended up among royalists in a Vendee castle, and then in the family
of a rich trader on their way to Aden . Guille "tapirized" a young
Parisian, Albert Morel, and then proceeded to fall in love with the
boy's mother. And when he brought Sartre along, he fell in love as
well.
"The little man is playing possum again," Pierre Guille tells
Raymond Aron. They have concocted a strategy to figure out what
Sartre really thinks of their work. "One of Sartre's peculiarities,"
Raymond Aron remembers, "was that he could not stand any direct
confrontation, so that, in order to know what he really thought of my
papers, I had to ask Guille, who would then collect the information
and convey it to me ... . And yet, I don't think it would have
bothered me," he adds, "if he had told me that an essay of mine was
no good. Once he liked something I had written on Rousseau,
another time he did not care for the way I had broached a question of
17. Interview with Georges Lefranc, May 26, 1982.
