La Courtine is the military camp where Alexandre Farel’s academic trajectory is interrupted by compulsory training and acute distress. After three weeks of demanding drills under superiors he despises, he attempts suicide; the camp thus marks a rupture in the life of a student whose achievements had long depended on intellectual performance.

Setting and Training

Soon after entering École polytechnique, Alexandre is required to complete a month of military instruction. At La Courtine, the routine is built around daily physical training and strict discipline, a sharp contrast with the intensive intellectual work of the two years he has spent in preparatory classes. The camp makes him a body under orders, repeatedly tested through effort, where previously he had been defined by academic achievement.

Crisis and Aftermath

Alexandre hates the new discipline, its abrupt imposition, and the superiors directing the training, whom he holds in contempt. After three weeks, the pressure culminates in a suicide attempt. He is taken to hospital in a state of complete exhaustion and distress, then leaves with the assurance that no one will find out what happened. The secrecy matters: he fears that knowledge of the attempt could damage his reputation at a moment when employers are already watching for future entrepreneurs.

Narrative Significance

La Courtine concentrates the distance between Alexandre’s celebrated public record and his private fragility. His education has rewarded sustained performance, but the camp exposes how little that record says about his capacity to withstand a sudden change in demands. The episode also places individual distress within a wider institutional silence: the narrative notes that three students from elite schools have died by suicide in less than two years, while suicide remains a taboo in institutions that produce the nation’s elite. La Courtine is therefore not merely a setting for military training; it is where the pressure beneath Alexandre’s achievement becomes an immediate crisis.