Les Caves du Vatican

One of Gide’s most famous books was also one of the most difficult for him to write. The project dated back to 1893; notes on the characters begin to appear in the Journal as early as 1905, and Gide began writing in 1911. On 24 June 1913, he confided to the same Journal: “Finished the Caves yesterday. No doubt much will still need revising after I have given it to Copeau to read and on the proofs. A strange book; but I am beginning to be thoroughly sick of it, up to my ears. I still cannot convince myself that it is finished, and I find it hard to stop thinking about it.” The result matched the effort involved.

For the plot of his novel, Gide drew on a sordid news item, a shady swindle that briefly made headlines in 1892: in Lyon, confidence tricksters had convinced overly credulous people that Pope Leo XIII was being held prisoner by Freemason cardinals in the cellars of the Vatican. Gide had kept newspaper articles and posters relating to this implausible affair; all that remained was to write the book. The novel is best remembered for its famous “gratuitous act,” a notion Gide had to defend himself from being seen to endorse: “But no, I do not believe, not at all, in a gratuitous act. In fact, I hold this one to be perfectly impossible to conceive, to imagine.”

A fine copy.
A rare printing.