Cocteau in “The Difficulty of Being” on his house as a refuge far from the Palais-Royal

In 1947 Jean Cocteau moved into a seventeenth-century château near Fontainebleau, which remained his permanent residence until the end of his days.

In La Difficulté d'être [“The Difficulty of Being”] he wrote of it: “This house was waiting for me. Here I am as in a refuge, far from the telephones of the Palais-Royal. It reminded me of the provincial life in which I once dreamed of Paris, and from which I later longed to escape to it. Here I observe the fantastic and absurd obstinacy of plants. The rays of the sun, reflected in the waters of the moat, trace shifting marble patterns on the wall of my room. Spring triumphs everywhere.”

AD has a splendid piece on Cocteau's house