For the Soul of France

History had taught republicans to distrust luminaries.

Several months later, in December 1892, the valiant, independent-minded Abbé Frémont noted regretfully in his journal, “Hatred of the Republic and of Jews is today the sustenance of French clergy. Drumont is their preceptor. Above all, don’t tear this choice morsel out of their mouths: if you try, you will immediately be smeared with ink and blacke

Wilhelm refused, and the matter might have rested there had Bismarck not made the refusal sound contemptuous by mischievously editing a telegram from Wilhelm to Louis-Napoléon.

Civilization, life itself, is something learned and invented. Bear this truth well in mind: Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes. After several years of peace men forget it all too easily. They come to believe that culture is innate, that it is identical with nature. But savagery is always lurking two steps away, and it regains a foothold as

“So there exist fresh young brains and souls that this idiotic poison has already deranged? How very sad, and how ominous for the coming twentieth century!”

France’s malady is its need to speechify.”

One consoles oneself for not knowing foreign lands by supposing that one knows one’s own country at least, and one is wrong; for there are always areas of one’s own land that one has not visited, and races of men who are new to one. I experienced this fully then. I felt that I was seeing these Montagnards for the first time, so greatly did their mo

De Lesseps’s grandiosity, or capacity for self-delusion, made him, like Eugène Bontoux, an exceptionally effective promoter.

It was France’s misfortune and originality, a journalist observed in 1861, that since the Revolution every form of government had been regarded as a usurpatory improvisation by one camp or another. Twenty years later, the remark still held true.

Everyone agreed that France faced a demographic crisis.