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
Habib Bourguiba with Mathilde. This pregnancy reassured him as he thought he was sterile. But the relationship of the couple worsened to a point that Bourguiba left the house to sleep at his friends' place, back at the campus. On 9 April 1927, Mathilde gave birth to a boy, whom they named Jean Habib. They moved into another apartment in Bagneux, in the Parisian suburbs. Bourguiba, sick at the time, had to prepare his final exams, which he sat for a month after the birth of his son. He obtained respectively a bachelor's degree in law and the higher degree of political