When he began writing what would become some three hundred articles, Bernanos was living in Brazil. He had settled in August 1940 in a small house on the side of a hill called “Cruz das almas” (Croix-des-âmes). There, shortly before his tragic death, he would receive Stefan Zweig.
Writing for Brazilian newspapers and for the BBC, Bernanos first denounced Vichy France’s responsibility for the French defeat, condemning collaboration and supporting the Resistance and de Gaulle. His articles were collected in volume form locally, published by Charles Ofaire [actually Höfer], a Swiss exile, part adventurer, part man of letters, then head of Éditions Atlantica Editora.
His only text close to a detective novel, Monsieur Ouine, was first published there, followed by the four volumes making up this Chemin de la Croix-des-âmes, of which we offer here Volume II, covering the articles of 1940.
A few months before the appeal of 18 June, in Les Enfants humiliés, he had prophesied: “Mon pays est soigneusement tenu dans l’ignorance de ce qu’il défend, de ce qu’il risque de perdre, de ce qu’il est presque sûr de perdre si quelque miracle ne suscite pas au dernier moment un homme qui parle enfin à son cœur, à ses entrailles.” In 1944, at the Liberation, Bernanos returned to France; Charles de Gaulle, at his own request, met with him twice: first to award him the Legion of Honor, then to offer him a ministerial post. Bernanos refused both.
Some foxing to the limitation leaf, as often.