vowed to Communism; so long as he lives, he belongs to us.”^46 This is
a model of the bad faith that Sartre will later call “the spirit of
seriousness.”
One gathers from these exchanges how Sartre views both the Party
and the Church. We shall see him addressing both antagonists in his
famous “Is Existentialism a Humanism?” lecture (March 1946 ), where
he explains that a new challenge to the loyalty of the younger generation
is now on the scene, a third option: existentialism.
Though many thought thatRoads of Freedomwas a trilogy, Sartre con-
tinued to work on a fourth volume that would join his list of unfinished
works. Nonetheless parts of the work did exist in two sections, the first
published independently inLes Temps Modernesas “Strange Friendship”
( 1949 ) and the second “The Last Chance,” which gave its name to the
entire volume, did not appear until that volume was reconstructed from
unpublished fragments by Michel Rybalka and Georges Bauer for the
Ple ́iade edition of Sartre’sŒuvres romanesques( 1981 ).
Though unfinished, what the fourth volume does for the story is prepare
for Brunet’s second escape after the first failed due to betrayal by a fellow
prisoner. That betrayal cost the life of another major figure, a stand-in for
Nizan, who has assumed an alias after having been vilified by the Party for
his public withdrawal because of its support of the German–Soviet pact.
Brunet has befriended the man without knowing about his pariah status
vis-a`-vis the Party. By the time he has learned his identity, Brunet has
come to love and respect the man. He realizes that he too is “objectively”
undermining the formative project of the other operative by instructing
the young recruits that the Soviets will inevitably reject that pact with the
Nazis, contrary to what the Party line is asserting.
Brunet’s dilemma is intensified when, in rather incredible fashion,
Mathieu appears in the camp, having survived the collapse of the tower
and having emerged as a committed resister to the Nazis, though, for all
that, not a Party member. His commitment finds expression in organiz-
ing escapes from the camp and it is in this capacity that he and Brunet
have their final meeting.
Their final conversation exhibits Sartre’s growing sympathy with the
Party – not to the point of joining it, which he never did, but insofar as it
(^46) Troubled Sleep, 369 , 408 and 417.
160 The necessity of contingency:Nausea