The diaries of Mauriac and Guy are a precious source for understanding de Gaulle’s volatile state of mind over the next few months. On his first night of ‘freedom’ at Marly, he plunged into a biography of Disraeli by André Maurois. At one point he triumphantly read out a passage where Bismarck told Gladstone: ‘Never defend yourself in front of a popular assembly except by attacking; in the pleasure that your opponents get from the new attack they forget their attack on you.’
