BALBEC AND CONDORCET 6rwhich HaIevy, aged fifteen, proclaimed himself the founder and
leader. It died in March, at the thirteenth number; but from its
ashes sprang the Revue Verte, written on the green paper, pre-
scribed for the sake of his pupils' eyes and his own, by the master
of Class Two, Eugene Lintilhac. Nothing of it survives but Mr
Secretary Marcel's written, semi-humorous protest against
Halevy's request, seconded by Bizet, for permission to copy
certain articles for the good of posterity. The Revue Verte, he
argues, 'unlike the so-called public press', is published not for
financial gain nor in a large number-of copies (this is no exaggera-
tion, for there was never more than one copy, free of charge),
but 'for the amusement of an extremely limited and select group'.
These 'fleeting reflections of the mobility of imaginations at play'
must be 'protected against the criticism of teaders for whom they
were never scribbled'; otherwise 'Mr Secretary will be under the
regretful necessity of refusing his participation in a review so
widely different from that in which he hitherto thought of
collaborating.' But Daniel HaIevy consoled himself in the 1920S
for the early death of the Revue Verte by launching the famous
Cahiers Verts, no. 68 of which was the Souvenirs sur Marcel
Proust of their schoolfellow Robert Dreyfus.
The most important of these little magazines was the last, the
Revue Lilas, named after the colour of the little twopenny
exercise books, bought at the stationer's in the Passage du Havre
near Condorcet, in which it was written. There is a persistent
rumour that Marcel's essay on the spires of Martinville appeared
in it; and though there is no actual evidence for this, it is just
possible that the rumour may be based on reliable oral tradition,
perhaps deriving from Daniel Halevy himself. But one of Marcel's
contributions survives, dedicated 'to my dear friend Jacques
Bizet', and headed 'for the Reyue Lilas, to be destroyed after
publication'. He imagines himself in his bedroom at the age of
fifteen, oppressed by 'the horror of usual things', the banality of
his lighted lamp, the noise of crockery in the next room, the dark
violet sky with its gleaming stains of moonlight and stars. Then
he is seventeen, it is the present, and everything is transformed:
the Boulevard Malesherbes below his window, with 'the blue
moonbeams dripping from the chestnut-trees', and the 'fresh,
chill breathing of all these sleeping things', becomes a night-
scene as exquisite as the moonlit garden of Combray, and 'usual