Three...Six...Nine..., a veritable little jewel of a book, tells the tale of nine miniature epics, the author’s nine moves within Paris. Throughout the text, we can read between the lines what all these upheavals meant to Colette: achieving wisdom. Three...Six...Nine... conjures up, among other places, rue de Villejust, rue Jacob, the chalet in Passy, the Champs-Elysées apartment... and Colette’s last haven: the first-floor apartment at 9, rue de Beaujolais.
Written during the war and published in 1944, Three…Six…Nine… reveals barely a glimpse of the anxiety Colette was feeling (her husband, Maurice Goudeket, was of Jewish origins). Only a discreet confession lifts a corner of the veil of her immense despair: Colette the pagan, Colette the unbeliever, sometimes goes to Notre-Dame-des-Victoires — “It’s a church where, like at a village fountain, all sorts of thirsts can go to drink.” Wisdom, however, advises her to avoid asking certain questions. Wisdom dictates putting your nose to the grindstone of a new work, exhuming a few wisps of the past and occasionally lifting your head to gaze at a flight of swallows.