XXI 



INTRODUCTION 



ON a calm summer evening we were seated together 

 on our terrace. 



On the preceding day, one who hardly knew my 

 husband had come to ask him for information con- 

 cerning his life, with the object of writing his biography. 

 We were saying to each other how inevitably super- 

 ficial and incomplete such a biography was bound to 

 be ; how difficult such a task is for a biographer, even 

 when fully informed ; how necessary it is to be 

 thoroughly acquainted with a man and with every 

 phase of his existence in order to give a truthful 

 picture of his character and of his life. The intimate 

 side is bound to remain more or less closed to a 

 stranger ; in order to decipher it, it is indispensable 

 for the writer of a biography to have lived in complete 

 communion of spirit with its subject. Our long past, 

 spent together, fulfilled all these conditions. 



My husband's whole life was well known to me. 

 My mother-in-law had often told me vivid stories of 

 his childhood ; he himself willingly talked to me 

 about his past. As to the second part of his existence, 

 we had lived it together. 



In order clearly to understand his character, at 



