Autograph letter signed
Dated Jarnac, August 2, 1938.
2 pages on 1 s. (210 x 270 mm) in black ink.
A very beautiful letter to his future fiancée, Marie-Louise Terrasse [Catherine Langeais], from whom he is separated by the summer holidays, when he spends time with his family in Jarnac, Charente.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
Catherine Langeais (1923-1998), whose real name was Marie-Louise Terrasse, and François Mitterrand met on January 28, 1938, at the École normale supérieure ball. Two years later, when he was a prisoner in Stalag IXA in Hesse, he described this meeting to Jacques Biguet, one of his companions in captivity: “One Saturday, I was feeling down in the dumps, I went into my room, I came across some Bristol board that I had forgotten on a table. It was an invitation to Normal Sup’s ball. I went. I saw a blonde with her back to me. She turned towards me. I stood rooted to the spot. Then I asked her to dance. I was crazy about her.” The blonde girl was accompanied by her parents, who had forbidden her to give her name to her partners. Mitterrand would call her Béatrice, in reference to Béatrice Portinari, the Florentine of The Divine Comedy. She only told him that she was a pupil at the Lycée Buffon, in the third year. From the Monday, he watched her leave the school, followed her from afar, discovered that she lived near the Place Denfert-Rochereau. Until their first kiss in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Truly won over, as never before in a relationship, he was finally introduced to her parents. “He was invited to Valmondois, to their second home. Marie-Louise’s father was a university professor and her brothers were teachers at the École Normale Supérieure. At their home, Mitterrand met brilliant minds, writers such as Georges Duhamel, and politicians. Marie-Louise’s father was a member of the cabinet of former Foreign Minister Paul Flandin. He was secretary general of the Democratic Alliance, a small party created in the 19th century by Waldeck-Rousseau, and one of whose most illustrious representatives was Paul Deschanel. François Mitterrand enjoyed this more open environment than the one he had known at home in the Charente. He had already asked Marie-Louise’s parents for her hand in marriage, but the girl’s mother considered the marriage premature. Marie-Louise was not yet 16 and François had not completed his military service. ‘Never mind!’, he replied. As a student, he could have benefited from a further suspension. He will answer the call in September, for love. In the meantime, the summer separates the two young people. François spends it with his father in Jarnac. Every day, he writes impassioned letters to Béatrice.”
“When I am given leave, I have a habit of abusing it, especially when I particularly like the person I am with… So, here I am again. It’s not extremely boring to be with you, nor is it so unbearable: so you will excuse me if I settle down with you without further ado […]. I am far from the one I love (love! what a strange thing!), I can only imagine her face, her presence, so I talk and I write. Let’s face it, Miss Beatrice, aren’t you ashamed of yourself for cycling around with young men and making me absolutely furious! My only consolation is that I think the same sun that is roasting me is gilding and enveloping you. But perhaps in time I will become jealous of it too. As I write these words, I can hear Yvonne Printemps singing Mozart’s “Letter”; she says “when you write to me, always tell me that you are terribly bored, since your departure, my love, for many days my thoughts have been with you” […]. I’m going to get a motorbike and practise for my license (already, an incident during the apprenticeship: a fall, skinned knees of one of my cousins, note from the garage owner). Saturday I went to a party: evening dresses, champagne, simpering. My darling, that’s where I measure your victory: only you live in me, because I love you […].”
François Mitterrand wrote more than 300 letters to the woman he called Zou. Despite getting engaged in March 1940, he never married her. The war, and then captivity, kept them apart. In pain for Mitterrand; in June 1942, he wrote to his confidante, Marie-Claire Sarrazin: “Do I still love this Béatrice with her disturbing doves? Surely. But I love her because I have loved her and there is a nuance there. I do not suffer and then love outside of her. But she will never be a stranger to me and is now for me one of those ‘little allegorical goddesses’ of which Proust speaks […]. The beautiful road of ideal walks that attracts me is still hard to my step – love seems to me perfect or rather complete only when it is sensitive. And yet, there too bitterness is close.
