"The first time Aurélien saw Bérénice, he found her quite ugly."

It is with this famous line that one of Louis Aragon's most beautiful novels begins. Aurélien tells the impossible love story between the eponymous character, a worldly Parisian broken by the Great War, embodying the famous mal du siècle, and Bérénice, a multifaceted character who is both idealistic and modern, oscillating between the naive provincial she once was and the passionate lover she will become.

Against all odds, Aurélien, a charming and idle young man, more a spectator than an actor in his own life, falls deeply in love with Bérénice, who has come to spend a few days in Paris, leaving her native countryside.

Aurélien loves Bérénice and Bérénice loves Aurélien. Two tragic heroes who try to escape their unhappiness by clinging to this love so strong, so vibrant, so penetrating, but which they will never manage to live, each projecting their fears and fantasies onto the other. A love made impossible by this quest for the absolute.

Separated for 18 years, their love will never cease to be, even though it never truly existed.

It is by chance during the Second World War that their paths cross again. A reunion that confirms what each feared: their love was nothing more than a chimera, responding more to a need to love than to a love anchored in a reality that escaped them.

Guided by her sense of the absolute and the independence she gained over these lost years, Bérénice ends their story with this expected but nonetheless tragic line:

"There is truly nothing left in common between you and me, my dear Aurélien, nothing."