Barzini, Luigi by The Europeans

Author:The Europeans
Format: epub

140 * LUIGI BARZINI life becomes difficult, the franc loses value, the state is paralyzed, the country defenseless in times of danger, sous la menace d un danger commun , or threatened by economic collapse, unemployment, anarchy, revolution, and ruin, the French become violently discontented with their traditional ways, sickened by the precariousness of each coming day, frightened for their very life and property. Then they long to be unified and pacified, by force if necessary, led to harmony, saved from ruin, and made prosperous by one man, a man who can enforce law and order, bridge the gap between mediocre reality and their national dream, make their country happy and glorious in peacetime and victorious in time of war, once more supreme in Europe if not in the world. In such moments “les Frangais vont instinctivement au pouvoir” (the French are attracted by power), as Rene de Chateaubriand says in his Memoires d! Outre-tombe (livre 24, chapter 6). Then “ils n’aiment point la liberte; Tegalite est leur idole. Or Fegalite et le despotisme ont des liaisons secretes/’ (They do not love liberty; equality is their idol. But equality and despotism have secret connections.) The men who, at turning points of history, managed to make the French behave as a great nation and sometimes led them to victory, to grandeur, and to prosperity, are the immortal heroes of French history. School children recite their names like those of saints in litanies. Among them are (as Francois Maurras said) “the Forty Kings who made France”: Clovis, the king of the Franks, who gave the country its name and its religion, Hugh Capet, the first king, Philippe Auguste, Saint Louis, Henry IV, Louis XIV. . . . Added to them, there are a young peasant girl, Jeanne d’Arc, and one fanatical and meticulous organizer of bureaucracy (he and his men worked sixteen hours a day), centralizer of power, spinner of meticulously intricate legal nets, promoter of all kinds of state-owned or controlled industrial activities, founder of the merchant navy, reformer of taxation, creator of the cadastre (the register of all lands and their owners) and the Bibliotheque Nationale. He gave the Academie, of which he was a member, thirty-nine of its famous forty armchairs. (One rich

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