Once we were back in Paris, we became, so to speak, inseparable. But when I say ‘we’, I feel I am striking a false note. There was a ‘he’, Lacan, and there was an ‘I’, myself, who followed him: this did not make a ‘we’. Moreover, if using the pronoun ‘we’ has never come altogether naturally to me, it was profoundly alien to Lacan. He could say that he was ‘writhing at your feet’, this wasn’t completely false – it sometimes happened quite literally – but it had nothing to do with any ‘us’, of course. His profound solitude, his ‘apartism’ ruled out any ‘we’. But that did not stop him from being what these days would in French be called fusionnel, that is, someone who constantly demanded your presence at his side. Even when at weekends he was preparing for his seminar, he shared his working space without difficulty; you could never get in his way as he was so concentrated on his work, and he loved to have you within reach. Besides, he did not like solitude, and was obviously not used to it. And later, when I went away, I was afraid he might invite some new conquest to Guitrancourt. So I very rarely left the place.

In the early days, Lacan, who was a tease, told me that women always resemble some scourge or other. I myself, and my kind of woman, was like a flood. I secretly told myself that he did not put up any barrier against the Pacific surges of this invasion. And Gloria had not vetoed, as she had done for others, my presence at 5 rue de Lille. My youth, my discretion had disarmed her, and she adopted me. The only obstacle was T., who for ten years already had occupied an important place – albeit far from unique – in Lacan’s life. To my great hurt, he spent most of his weekends in Guitrancourt with her. At first I tried to pay him back in his own coin, but he seemed so upset that I quickly renounced any spirit of retaliation.

He liked to claim that he was faithful. I had immediately realized in what sense this was to be understood: he stratified things. Refusing to let someone down, he never left a woman, even if, at times, he made her throw in the towel. He gladly remembered the women of his youth, but also the most recent ones. Thus he confessed to me that when we were in Rome he had stood up his last conquest, who was expecting him somewhere in Italy. She soon cried off. Having bumped into me in the rue de Lille, she sent Lacan a little message, which read: ‘So that’s the missing link between man and ape.’ I had easily recognized myself, since I have long arms and a somewhat protruding jaw.

Since his first affair with a woman when he was seventeen, he told me that he had always gone for thirty-year-olds. He still hadn’t passed his baccalaureate when he met a certain Marie-Thérèse to whom he dedicated his thesis in 1932, under the initials MTB. Their relationship extended throughout his medical studies. He proudly told me that Marie-Thérèse had paid a bookseller’s bill for him when he was a young man, and she was the one who financed their holidays: in those days he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I was rather shocked, but also amused by this portrait of Lacan as a young gigolo.

He also told me about Olesia Sienkiewicz, the wife of Drieu La Rochelle, whom he had consoled after her husband’s infidelity. He had clearly been extremely attracted to her. He enjoyed describing her typing his thesis in her underwear, in the apartment that Drieu had left for them. I remember that he saw her again and dined with her in 1977 or 1978. This was after a request by Dominique Desanti, who was then writing a biography of Drieu and could not get her to give him an interview. Lacan loved people to make an effort for him, but he was also capable of bending over backwards to do someone a favour, even to satisfy a mere whim. He had several times climbed the six flights of stairs to Olesia’s flat, as she wasn’t answering the phone. He eventually found her and invited her to dinner. But he realized they had nothing to say to each other: ‘She’s moved on from men’, he told Dominique. She was living with a woman at the time.

When it came to Sylvia, who later became his wife, he told me an anecdote worthy of Casanova. She was supple and agile and would come to him in his room at night time, climbing the wall up to his first-floor window. This was at the very beginning of their relationship, when he was still living with his first wife, Marie-Louise. One day, I asked him why Sylvia had stopped working as an actress. He replied, after a few moments’ reflection: ‘Yes, of course, I could have been Monsieur Sylvia Bataille!’ He greatly appreciated her wit. One day, at a congress, while they were at the hotel where the delegates were staying, Sylvia went out of the room. Returning a little later, she told him ‘Professor So-and-So is here’. Lacan asked if she had met him. She replied that she had recognized his shoes put out for cleaning in the corridor.

I had been with Lacan for several years when, having seen us cross the courtyard of 5 rue de Lille from her window in the building opposite, Sylvia told Lacan that we had reminded her of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. ‘I’m Don Quixote?’ he asked. ‘Of course’, she answered. This hurt me a bit, but it was an astute comment. I tagged along after this man as he marched straight ahead, driven by a desire whose strength never ceased to impress me.

Lacan was very generous with his women. And when he gave one a present, he did not forget the others. He covered them with jewels and foliage. It was his way of paying them homage, and this homage was long-lasting. Foliage plants flocked to my house. Some of them are still alive after forty years. When it came to jewellery, I was less keen. But Lacan encouraged me to overcome my reticence and all that belongs to the register of what I would call ‘defensiveness’. The first time I met him, he saw me curled up in my armchair, wrapped in a shawl, and asked me why I was ensconced like that. I replied that I was ‘shy’. ‘What on earth does that mean?’ he haughtily retorted. And the first time I came to Guitrancourt, he pointed out to me, this time with a smile, that I was ‘wrapping myself up in my little shoes’.

Being defensive or off-handed, or making excuses, met with his disapproval. Usually he did not attack them head-on; he made a joke about them; that was enough. However, he was more direct when it came to his disciples, when he saw them getting tied up by their inhibitions or sticking obstinately to their excuses. He called on participants at his seminars and at congresses to cut to the chase, and was annoyed by their timidity. So if a woman was reading out her text, he would rebuke her: ‘Do you think you might be brave enough to dive right in?’, ‘Say what you have to say …’