[Présentation de Robert Vallery-Radot]

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is not easy to speak of a friend without speaking of oneself, and even without some indulgence, for what is best in a man is, in the end, his friendships. […]”

This important lecture was given a few months after the publication of Sous le soleil de Satan. Bernanos often explained the historical circumstances surrounding the novel’s genesis, and his account changed little over time: he emerged from the war transformed; before it he had been an outspoken activist, a highly polemical journalist and something of a dandy as a student — “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 in 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.