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GENERAL |
| of André Gide.
(Its entrance hall and large staircase are mentioned by Gide in his volume
"Si le grain ne meurt," as he recalls hiding under the large console there.
The console, I noted, was not there. But any place where Gide, my
idol, had lived (although I admired him for his style and not his morals)
would contain for me an endearing presence. I felt slightly reassured
and signed the required papers in the secretariat off the hall, which opened
wide on a park and the Mediterranean in the distance. The seminary,
built on a hill, was a perfect lookout above the railroad yard to the left
and offered a splendid panorama in the direction of the lagoons and the
seaside resort of Palavas.
The first thing I noted in the park was a basketball court, where a dozen students were shooting hoops. Below, in a more improvised field, another team was playing volleyball. One of the basketball players motioned to me to join them, which I did reluctantly, as I had never played team sports before. I had always preferred rowing and mountain climbing to soccer. They welcomed me into the game, despite my dismal shooting. Sitting on the sidelines to rest with my new fellow students, I suddenly realized that they were in no way what I had feared. They were not only better in sports than I was, they had a colossal sense of humor and they behaved like every other student I had seen before, only perhaps in a more kindly manner. There was a student community, created by living together in that large converted mansion, to which I could belong and whose concerns I could share. There was life at the seminary after all. Five days later, the tempest
broke. In response to the invasion of North Africa by the Allies,
the Germans marched into Pétain's Southern France on November 11.
The fleet at Toulon opened the valves and sank the battleships. De
Lattre de Tasigny, the commander of the Montpellier garrison, was picked
up by a submarine not far from Palavas and escaped. On that same
day, and in the same city, at the Protestant seminary, one soldier of de
Lattre's army, Private First Class Herbert Stein-Schneider, disappeared
into thin air. |
