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passed me.

It was a good life. You worked hard, but you had a lot of fun. We went off on vacations, first to Rapallo, then to a little town called Cassis on the Mediterranean coast of France near Marseilles, which was a lovely place where I perfected my art of drinking. Then we would go to Majorca. My mother and I went off to Majorca sometimes on the spring vacations and then we would go to a place called Pollenza in Majorca, where you could get a nice room for a dollar a day. I got one of my first jobs there as a bartender. Some friends of mine owned a bar and they decided to get a divorce and they had to go to the mainland to do that and left me in charge of the bar for two months at age seventeen--bar and restaurant, which was a great educational opportunity in every sense of the word.

Were you totally carefree or did you understand what was happening, let's say, politically in Europe in general?

Oh, yes. If you are brought up in the French system, the first thing you learn is to argue about politics and practically everything else. Even as a kid, you discuss everything that's going on and you have very strong views about everything.

What were some of your views?

I shouldn't say strong views. You had very argumentative views. It was not a matter of having a faith, it was a matter of winning an argument and you could take either side of the argument.