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died of a heart attack. His last words were: ‘If you only knew . . .!’ Murraille was twenty-five. These were difficult times for him. He worked as film and music-hall critic for several second-rate papers.
    He quickly developed an appalling reputation in the newspaper world, where he was currently regarded as a ‘rotten apple’. Though this saddened him, his laziness and his taste for easy living made it impossible for him to change. He had a permanent fear of being short of money, the very prospect threw him into a state of panic. At times like this, he was capable of anything, like an addict desperate for a fix.
    When I met him, his star was on the rise. He was editor of his own magazine. ‘Troubled times’ had made it possible for him to realise his dream. He had exploited the chaos and the murk. He felt perfectly at home in this world which seemed hell bent on destruction. I often wondered how a man who looked so distinguished (everyone who met him will tell you about his unaffected elegance, his frankness) could be so utterly devoid of scruples. There was one thing I liked a lot about him: he never deluded himself. A friend from his old regiment had once accidentally shot him while cleaning his gun; the bullet had missed his heart by inches. I often heard him say: ‘When I’m condemned to death and they order a firing squad to put twelve bullets in me, they can save a bullet.’
    Marcheret
was originally from the Quartier des Ternes. His mother, a colonel’s widow, had done her best to bring him up correctly. She felt old before her time, and threatened by the outside world. She had hoped her son would go into the church. There, at least, he might be safe. But Marcheret, from the age of fifteen, had only one idea: to get away from their dingy apartment on the Rue Saussier-le-Roi, where the photograph of Maréchal Lyautey on the wall gently watched over him. (The photograph even bore an inscription: ‘To Colonel de Marcheret. With fond wishes, Lyautey.’) All too soon, his mother had genuine cause for concern: he was lazy and neglected his studies. He was expelled from the Lycée Chaptal for fracturing another pupil’s skull. Frequented the cafés and the fleshpots of Paris. Played billiards and poker into the early hours. Needed money constantly. She never reproached him. Her son was not to blame, but the others, the bad boys, the communists, the Jews. How she longed for him to stay safely in his room . . . One night, Marcheret was strolling along the Avenue de Wagram. He felt the familiar surge of frustration twenty-year-olds feel when they don’t know what to do with their life. The guilt he felt at causing his mother grief was mingled with anger at the fact he had only fifty francs in his pocket . . . Things could not carry on like this. He wandered into a cinema showing
Le Grand Jeu
with Pierre-Richard Willm. The story of a young man who sets off to join the Foreign Legion. It was as though Marcheret was seeing himself up on the screen. He sat through two screenings, enthralled by the desert, the Arabic town, the uniforms. At 6 p.m. he walked into the nearest café as Legionnaire Guy de Marcheret and ordered a
blanc-cassis
. Then a second. He signed up the next day.
    In Morocco, two years later, he heard about his mother’s death. She had never recovered from his leaving. Hardly had he confided his grief to one of his barrack-room mates, a Georgian by the name of Odicharvi, than the man dragged him off to a Bouss-Bir establishment that was part brothel, part cafe. At the end of the evening, his friend had the marvellous idea of raising a glass, pointing towards Marcheret and shouting: ‘Let’s drink to the orphan!’ He was right. Marcheret had always been an orphan. And in enlisting in the Legion, he had hoped to find his father. But he had found only loneliness, sand and the mirages of the desert.
    He returned to France with a parrot and a dose of malaria. ‘What pisses me off about things like