[Présentation de Robert Vallery-Radot]

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is not easy to speak of a friend without speaking of oneself, and even without speaking of oneself with a certain complacency, for the best a man has in him is, after all, his friendships. […]”

This important lecture was delivered a few months after the publication of Sous le soleil de Satan. Bernanos frequently explained the historical circumstances surrounding the novel’s genesis, and his account changed little over time: he emerged from the war a transformed man, having previously been an insolent activist, a highly polemical journalist and a somewhat dandyish student — “j’aimais le bruit” (“I loved noise”), he admits in this very lecture devoted to his friend Robert Vallery-Radot.

Vallery-Radot, the son of a librarian at the Louvre and himself a man of letters, was the brother of the writer René Vallery-Radot. A section commander during 1914–1918, he received the Croix de guerre and the Légion d’honneur, and formed a close friendship with Bernanos.

This manuscript was first reproduced in 1952 in the Bulletin des amis de Georges Bernanos (25 December 1952, pp. 27–31).

This remains its only printed appearance.