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 see him once again, and, in the upcoming months, invited him to move in with her. Since then, he gave his room in the campus away and settled with Mathilde. With this new way of life, Bourguiba distanced from the other students, even with the Zouitens, supposed to be his future family-in-law and sightseeing in Paris. It was Habib, the brother of Chadlia Zouiten, who discovered his affair with Mathilde and wrote him a letter: "I do not hide that I find this attitude a bit coward [...] you, who was supposed to marry my sister". But even in the