In Paris Madame Tillion immediately made contact with a close friend on Bourgès-Maunoury's staff. Yacef's "deal" was passed on to the premier, and the first indications were encouraging. She was asked to return to Algiers and resume contacts with Yacef; but "at your own risk and peril". … At the same time she had also taken the opportunity of calling upon her old wartime chief, General de Gaulle, in his private office in the Rue Solférino. He had listened to her gravely as she described the horrors of the prison executions and of the tortures she had learned about in Algiers, and then made a remark that would seem full of significance a few years later: "This proves that one must talk, negotiate, prendre langue. One cannot abandon a people—whoever they may be—in quarantine!"

QUESTION: What was the actual timeline between de Gaulle's private remark and his shift toward negotiating with the FLN? The highlight suggests early private signaling.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 670