Early life of Habib Bourguiba Abdelaziz Thâalbi from exile and the protests of April 5, 1922, which increased his nationalist aspirations. In 1924, he got his baccalaureate, as valedictorian and flew to Paris in order to pursue his Higher education. In the French capital city, he enrolled in the Law school of Sorbonne and spent his time discovering the colonial civilization to "arm himself intellectually" against it. There, he met Mathilde Lefras, a fourteen-year older widow, with whom he had a relationship. In 1927, when he obtained a law licence, Mathilde gave birth to their son, Habib Jean Bourguiba. When he returned to Tunisia, Bourguiba
Early life of Habib Bourguiba her, the unfortunate, a catastrophe. She was already forty years old. Many of her pregnancies weakened her. I was told that when she gave birth to me, she was so ashamed of having a child at that age that she stifled her cries for deliverance while gritting her teeth with a towel placed in her mouth. Nevertheless, she was relieved to give birth to a boy, avoiding the catastrophe that would have been that of a girl. That was how Habib Bourguiba, last of his siblings was born. Despite his financial difficulties, Ali Bourguiba dedicated a great deal of attention