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provinces, at the age of eighteen. They were now twenty-four. Maheu was “the Lama,” Nizan “the Grand Duke,” Sartre “the Little Man.” 11 Maheu admired his two friends with a passion, especially Sartre, whom he thought a genius. But Sartre was very different from him, he explained. Sartre belonged to the Parisian bourgeoisie; Maheu felt like an upstart in that milieu. Maheu liked to enjoy life; Sartre never for a second stopped analyzing. Maheu liked the countryside and fresh air; Sartre didn’t give a damn about such things.
    There was something princely about Maheu. He reminded Beauvoir of Jacques, the cousin she had been in love with throughout her adolescence. They were both graceful, boyish characters, whooften smiled in place of speaking. Both valued beauty—in art, nature, and people. To her, they were artists, poets.
    Beauvoir’s friendships had always been exceptionally formal. Even with her bosom friend, Zaza, whom she had known since the age of ten, she used the formal vous rather than the informal tu. (Zaza used tu with all her other friends.) And when they met or said good-bye, they shook hands. There was only one person who ever hugged or kissed Simone, and that was her exuberant Polish friend Stépha, who was extroverted and unrestrained to a point that left Simone a little dizzy.
    Maheu made Beauvoir conscious of her body in a way she had never been before. He would put his hand on her arm and wag his finger in her face mockingly. He commented on her appearance, her clothes, her husky voice. He found it very appealing, he assured her. Beauvoir had never thought about her voice before.
    She was equally conscious of Maheu as a physical presence. “I would watch him come striding through the gardens with his rather awkward grace; I would look at his ears, transparent in the sun as pink sugar-candy, and I knew that I had beside me not an angel, but a real man,” she would write in her memoirs. His laugh was irresistible. “When he gave vent to his laughter, it was as if he had just unexpectedly dropped in on a strange planet and was making a rapturous discovery of its prodigious comicality.” 12
    In the three weeks running up to the written examinations, they saw each other almost every day. On the rare occasions when Maheu did not work in the library, he would turn up at the end of the afternoon and invite her for tea or coffee.
    Beauvoir was enchanted by their conversations. Maheu knew a lot about history and myth—more, she thought privately, than about philosophy—and had a wonderfully entertaining way of bringing the past to life. “My greatest happiness is Maheu,” she wrote in her journal. 13
    He was also her greatest source of anguish. When they said goodbye at the end of the day, she felt sad. He was going home to his wife. He rarely talked about his personal life, but he had told her that Inès was five years older than he, and represented all the mysteries and paradoxes of femininity. He loved her. She was beautiful. She came from the Catholic nobility.
    There were times when Beauvoir found Maheu disappointinglyconventional, particularly when it came to women. He admitted that bright women brought out a certain resistance in him. When Beauvoir told him about her tormented relationship with her cousin Jacques, Maheu said he thought she should marry Jacques. Society did not respect unmarried women. Beauvoir lent Maheu a recent English novel she had enjoyed, The Green Hat, by Michael Arlen. She admired its independent heroine, Iris Storm. Maheu did not. “I have no liking for women of easy virtue,” he told her. “Much as I like a woman to please me, I find it impossible to respect any woman I’ve had.” Beauvoir was indignant. “One does not have an Iris Storm!” 14
    The written exams were held in the middle of June. Beauvoir and Maheu walked into the library of the Sorbonne together. “Good luck,