"Is this how people live ?" Louis Aragon, in this chapter of "Les Voyageurs de l'Impérial", comes across as the privileged witness of a perverse, droll yet pitiful game played to rules of his own making. It's like a sophisticated drawing-room comedy, a dance between three generations who copy, spy on and envy each other. They all seem to have a hunch that this is their last chance, they've got to be happy and hurry up and live before it's too late. In fact the worms are already in the fruit. These sun-drenched summer days do not conceal their rottenness for long. The inevitable realities are closing in fast. These contradictory, cowardly but romantic, endearing but ruthless characters have sensed, in their own way, that the end of a certain world is nigh. "I hope they have a war", the old, exhausted château owner finally says. "By the time we've learned to live, it's already too late", Aragon alo said, but without hopelessness."
(Christian de Chalonge)