“When I had finished signing the book and lifted my head to return the book to its owner, I saw, slightly to my right, a girl who looked like a boy, with a golden ring in one nostril. We talked a little, she said that her name was Céline and that she was in her last year of an art school at Toulouse, where she lived and I was passing through. I told her I would like to see her work and wrote my address at the bottom of a drawing. Perhaps I was hooked by her ring in reality.

Later, in Nice, I got a letter with a strange request: “I would like to do my final traineeship with you.” I remembered her golden ring and her brazen look, and said yes. She came. I still don’t know to this very day which one of us was the trainee.”

Céline, first encounter, by Edmond Baudoin.