In the spring of 1932, when I passed my entrance exam, most of my friends from the ENS were finishing their studies; when the summer was over, they scattered throughout France, either to do their military service or to take up the teaching positions offered them. I once again spent my vacation in Germany, which was then in the midst of upheaval: German production had fallen to half the level of 1929, and Brüning, with Hindenburg’s support, was governing by means of emergency decrees. Such a situation couldn’t last. Elsewhere, too, the established order was faltering. In Spain, the monarchy had been overturned by a cabal of Freemasons, revolutionaries, and priests. America was almost on its knees. In France, the direct effects of the crisis were less felt, but the situation wasn’t rosy, and the Communists were quietly and methodically undermining things. Without telling anyone, I sent in my application for the NSDAP, Ausland section (for Reichsdeutschen living abroad), and was quickly accepted. When I entered the ELSP, in the fall, I continued to see my friends from the École normale and from L’Action française, who came up regularly to spend weekends in Paris. My classmates remained pretty much the same as at Janson, but to my surprise I found the classes interesting. It was also around this period, probably under the influence of Rebatet and his new friend Louis Destouches, who hadn’t yet become famous (his Journey to the End of the Night had just come out, but enthusiasm hadn’t yet spread beyond the circle of initiates, and Céline still liked to spend time with young people), that I formed a passion for French keyboard music, which was just being rediscovered and played; with Céline, I went to hear Marcelle Meyer; and more bitterly than ever I regretted my laziness and casualness that had made me abandon the piano so quickly. After the New Year, President Hindenburg invited Hitler to form a government. My classmates trembled, my friends waited with bated breath, I exulted. But while the Party was crushing the Reds, sweeping aside the garbage of plutodemocracy, and dissolving the bourgeois parties, I remained stuck in France. A real national revolution was taking place in front of our eyes and in our own time, and I could only follow it from afar, in the newspapers and the newsreels in the movie theaters. France too was seething. Many people went to Germany to see things firsthand; everyone wrote about and dreamed of a similar recovery for their country. People made contact with the Germans, official Germans now, who called for a Franco-German rapprochement; Brasillach introduced me to Otto Abetz, von Ribbentrop’s man (at that time still the Foreign Affairs Advisor of the Party): his ideas were no different from the ones I had aired since my first trip to Germany. But for many, Maurras remained an obstacle; only the best acknowledged that it was time to move on beyond his hypochondriac vaticinations, but even they hesitated, his charisma and the fascination he exercised held them under his sway. At the same time the Stavisky affair exposed the police connections of corruption in government and gave Action Française a moral authority it hadn’t known since 1918. All that came to an end on February 6, 1934. Actually it was a confused business: I too was in the streets, along with Antoine F. (who had entered the ELSP at the same time as I), Blond, Brasillach, a few others. From the Champs-Élysées, we vaguely heard some gunshots; farther down, near the Place de la Concorde, people were running. We spent the rest of the night walking through the streets, chanting slogans when we met other young people. We didn’t learn till the next day that there had been several deaths. Maurras, to whom everyone had instinctively turned, had stood down. The whole affair had just been a damp squib. “French inaction!” foamed Rebatet, who never forgave Maurras. It was all the same to me: my decision was taking shape, and I no longer saw a future for me in France.
