Pierre Bergé's literary tastes led him above all to Balzac, Flaubert or Proust.
François Mitterrand had to ask him during a final dinner in Latche for him to embark on the adventure of saving the house of Émile Zola in Médan.
Mitterrand had insisted, the house had been bequeathed to public assistance and there were still descendants of the writer:
"They are called Le Blond-Zola",
he had specified at the threshold of the tomb - because the president knew like the back of his hand this France “very Musée d'Orsay” where one met the Blond-Zola, the Comte-Offenbach and the Mante-Proust.
Driven by this socialist snobbery, Bergé had gone there, had sought advice from the wisest of his friends, Louis Gautier, magistrate at the Court of Auditors, and decided from the outset that restoring the house would only make sense. by extending it, in an annex building that existed, by a Dreyfus Museum.
Passing by the tall chimney of the writer's office adorned with the inscription
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