Accordingly I resigned my scholarship and decided to enrol myself at the Sorbonne with a view to taking my _licence ès lettres_. A voice within said: "Do not enter the University, but do not despise its degrees. They are only useful when you have not been there. Outside they are excellent blinds." In a year I had taken my licence, living on the lessons I managed to give here and there, and imbibing from these tasks an ever-keener longing for freedom. But in the end I felt myself beaten, and resigned myself to the fate I had despised. I entered for a scholarship in history, asking for Bordeaux. And I bade farewell to Paris. The Consultative Committee of Public Education, whose duty it is to decide in these matters, usually met at the beginning of October. I spent the intervening two months at a fishing village in the Landes, at the house of an old curé (it sounds dull, but it's true), who opened his poor house to me in memory of my parents, whom he had known. It was there, my friend, that I passed the most peaceful days of my life. I was free to roam at will through the great woods of the district, with no other appointments beyond meal-times. For the first time my reading was confined to such things as did not figure in an examination syllabus or the annual competition, and my mind could take in undistracted the glorious miracle of the dying season. The curé's house was at one end of a small lake which communicated with the sea through a narrow channel choked with aquatic plants. In the morning the roar of the tide woke me in my open room. From my window I would watch the irresistible advance of the great green ocean under a pink and grey sky. Wild duck and curlew wheeled overhead with their plaintive cries. What a temptation to stay there for ever! To watch the calm passage of the seasons. To be free from social ties, official routine, or any link with life. To spend all day and every day on the long straight dunes, where the great waves roll up ceaselessly in the wind and the jelly-fish thrown up high and dry on the silvery sand look for all the world like amethyst pendants.