154 Derrida 1963–1983
on. I went to see him every time there was some point I couldn’t
clear up, and each time he was very happy to talk to me. I was
attached to him as a teacher and as a person. Under his appar-
ent reserve, there was a fi re by which I liked to come and warm
myself.^31At the end of summer 1966, a few weeks after coming top in
the agrégation exam, Bernard Pautrat sent Derrida a letter that
he would remember. He expressed his gratitude – a gratitude that
went far beyond the support Derrida had provided during the year
leading up to the exam, and was really thankfulness for his presence,
his ‘really encouraging attention’, and ‘the irreplaceable depth’ of
which he had been such a sturdy example:
I think that, in the École, you yourself have a very tough and
poorly rewarded job. We have often showed an irritating
‘philo sophical passivity’. That’s why I’m taking the liberty of
telling you that your work was not, in spite of everything, a
waste of time. Without guides such as you, and Althusser, I
would long since have wandered away from philosophy; as you
know, without you, our idea of philosophy would have been
paltry and unattractive.^32