(3 of 3)
Camus himself would turn pale, would be irritable, even belligerent, when he drank too much. Simone de Beauvoir was somewhere in the middle. She was obviously interested in Camus, while he confided to a friend that he stayed away from her because he feared she would talk too much in bed. Her caustic treatment of Camus in her memoirs has been ascribed to spite, just as Sartre was patently jealous of the younger man who could attract women even without the exploitation of his intellect and reputation. In fact, Beauvoir wasn't as caustic as all that in her memoirs; one finds tenderness there as well. A legend that circulated at the time had Camus saying to a respectable woman of letters: 'We have, dear friend, spent a marvelous evening evoking high-minded subjects, but, you see, if a wench walked by right now I'd drop you and follow her.'