‘Thank you, I shall. You know I get around Paris a fair amount. As other people window-shop, I watch what’s going on. I watch the world and his brother pass by, I watch what’s going on around me.2 Well, some time towards the middle of last September, I left the house one afternoon with no clear idea of where I was going. You know how you always have a vague yen to go and see some pretty woman or other … you riffle through your little black book, you do a few mental comparisons, you weigh up the possible delights and you decide more or less on the spur of the moment. But when the sun’s shining and it’s warm outside you don’t always want to be cooped up indoors. On this particular day, it was warm and sunny and I lit a cigar before starting to stroll along the outer boulevard. As I was sauntering along I decided to make for the cemetery in Montmartre and have a little wander about there. I like cemeteries, you know. They sadden and they soothe me and I find I need that from time to time. And of course some of one’s chums are there, people nobody goes to see any more. I drop by every so often still. And as it happens, an old flame of mine is buried in Montmarte Cemetery, a lovely little lady I was very keen on at one point in my life, very attached to. So although it’s painful, I find it does me good. I mean all kinds of memories come flooding back while I’m there, letting my thoughts drift beside her grave. It’s all over for her of course …

The other reason I like cemeteries is because they’re like cities in themselves, densely populated at that. Just think how many generations of Parisians are packed in there forever; so many people stuck in their caves, their little holes just covered with a stone or marked with a cross, while the living take up so much room and make such a stupid racket.

Then of course you’ve got all the monuments, some of them much more interesting than in a museum. Though I wouldn’t put them in the same league, Cavaignac’s grave reminded me so much of that masterpiece by Jean Goujon, the statue of Louis de Brézé in the underground chapel at Rouen cathedral.3 That’s actually the root of all so-called modern, realist art, you know. That statue of the dead Louis de Brézé is more convincing, more terrible and more suggestive of inanimate flesh still convulsed in the death-agony than any of the tortured corpses you see sculpted these days on people’s tombs.