("Oh, look! He's wearing a crown, this tsar!" yelled one of them, pulling my hair.) The question was apparently quite simple: "Yes, I know he was a bloody tyrant; it says that in our history book. But if so, what is to be done about that brisk wind, smelling of the sea, that blew over the Seine? about the music of those verses that were carried away by that wind? about the scraping of the golden trowel on the granite? What is to be done about that day long ago? For I feel its atmosphere so strongly."

No, for me it was not a question of rehabilitating Nicholas II. I believed my history book and my teacher. But that far-off day; that wind, that sunny air? I was confused in these disordered reflections, part thoughts, part images. As I pushed away my laughing comrades, who were snatching at me and deafening me with their taunts, I suddenly felt terribly jealous of them: "How fortunate not to carry within oneself that day of great wind, that past so palpable and apparently so useless. Yes, to have only one view of life. Not to see as I see…"

This last thought seemed to me so strange that I stopped repelling my tormentors' attacks and turned toward the window, beyond which lay the snow-covered city. So I saw things differently! Was it an advantage? Or a handicap, a blemish? Perhaps this double vision could be explained by my two languages; thus, when I pronounced the Russian word "" a cruel tyrant rose up before me; while the word "tsar" in French was redolent of lights, of sounds, of wind, of glittering chandeliers, of the radiance of women's bare shoulders, of mingled perfumes, of the inimitable air of our Atlantis. I understood that this second view of things would have to be hidden, for it could only provoke mockery from others.

This secret meaning of words was subsequently revealed once more in a situation just as tragicomic as that of our history lesson.

I had joined an interminable queue that wound round outside the premises of a food shop, crossed the threshold, and then extended inside it.