How can you trust biographies and memoirs if their authors create their legends around famous names? Seeing how the familiar features of the world famous actress Sarah Bernhardt are gradually fading and distorted in a sea of literary memories, Françoise Sagan decided to turn to the legend herself. She sent a letter to the past and received an answer to it. The novel “Indestructible Laughter” is a correspondence that never happened and could not exist. Françoise Sagan was born when Sarah Bernhardt had been dead for several years. However, this trifle could not stop them: the women easily found a common language, because each of them saw their own reflection in the interlocutor. Translation: Nina Svetovidova