The Walls of Louis-le-Grand 1949–1952 51
At the beginning of October 1952, Jackie fi nally returned to Paris.
Before embarking on a third khâgne at Louis-le-Grand, he needed
to take exams for the licence: he had hardly done any preparation
for them and was very scared. He was relieved to pass them, even
if his results were no better than middling. Then it was back to
Louis-le-Grand, which he now knew like the back of his hand. At
the beginning of the year, he struck up a friendship with one of the
youngest pupils in the class, Michel Aucouturier, who would never
forget the fi rst times they met: ‘Derrida – or rather the Der’s, as we
called him at the time – was one of the brains in khâgne. He really
intimidated me, even if he was always aff able and almost protective
towards me. He sometimes told me that, being a blond, I reminded
him of his little brother Norbert who’d died at the age of two.’
Aucouturier was suffi ciently impressed by Jackie’s talents to tell his
sister Marguerite one day, showing her the class photo: ‘Try to spot
the philosopher of genius!’ Aucouturier passed the entrance exam at
his fi rst attempt, at the same time as Jackie, and they would become
even closer friends at the École Normale Supérieure.^31
As for Michel Monory, he stayed at Louis-le-Grand for only the
fi rst two months of the year. Having fi nally obtained his father’s
agreement, at the November half-term break, he left the khâgne,
where he felt out of place. He found a job as ‘au pair housemaster’
at the Lycée Chaptal, while fi nishing his licence in classics at the
Sorbonne and writing a mémoire de diplôme on ‘Aloysius Bertrand
and the birth of the prose poem’. This did not stop the two friends
from remaining close. They would arrange to meet in the little room
on the rue Lagrange or outside the Lycée Chaptal, right next to the
Gare Saint-Lazare. Sometimes, Michel would drag Jackie along to
the Théâtre de l’Athénée or the Théâtre Hébertot. Even though he
was much better than the previous year, Jackie was still of a sombre
and melancholy temperament. In his ‘secret and chaotic’ letters he
asked forgiveness for his silences, his periods of depression, and the
times when he could be harsh. Michel Monory sometimes felt as if
he were disintegrating under Derrida’s gaze, as if he were ‘just some-
thing small, empty and ridiculous’. ‘You force me through your
friendship to be very humble,’ he wrote to his friend.^32
During this third khâgne, Derrida grew closer to Pierre Foucher.
He too now lived outside the school, and rented a room in the same
district as Jackie, in the rue Quatrefage, near the Jardin des Plantes.
With Foucher, Derrida had a less sentimental friendship than with
Monory, and more rooted in the everyday.
It was during this third year of khâgne that we were closest.
We met up in the morning and cycled to the lycée. For lunch
and dinner, we went together to the special restaurant at
Port-Royal. It was a distinct improvement on the canteen at