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Now began a period of exhilaration and extreme poverty.  Varese's pockets were empty but he was free. Sometimes he almost starved and sometimes he had no place to sleep. But he had music and he was young.  He told me of nights when he slept under the arcades of the Louvre, grateful if the flics (cops) left him in peace, protected at least from the rain, if not from the cold.  At other times he had a lodging but no money for food.  And the hungrier he was, the more imperative his pride.

Louise Varese, Varese a looking glass diary, Norton, New York, 1972.

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