The Hotel on Place Vendome

If you hadn’t let them in, I wouldn’t have slept with him.” Later, she would put it more crudely: “My heart is French, but my ass is international.”

WHEN I DREAM OF AN AFTERLIFE . . . THE ACTION ALWAYS TAKES PLACE AT THE RITZ PARIS

HE WAS NOT REALLY DISAPPOINTED TO FIND PARIS WAS SO EMPTY. BUT THE STILLNESS IN THE RITZ BAR WAS STRANGE AND PORTENTOUS. IT WAS NOT AN AMERICAN BAR ANY MORE—HE FELT POLITE IN IT, AND NOT AS IF HE OWNED IT

IN PARIS, EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE AN ACTOR; NOBODY IS CONTENT TO BE A SPECTATOR.

That might have been the end of the matter. But in 1896 evidence emerged that pointed to the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus. A second inquiry was ordered. Now the senior officers and the government, determined to prove that they had condemned the right man to a brutalizing solitary confinement on Devil’s Island, found a new solution to their dilemma: they forged and fabricated evidence against the unlucky officer and whipped up an anti-Semitic fervor that drew on deep prejudices in French culture

From the perspective of the ruling elite, the scandal never should have been a scandal at all. In 1894, the military discovered that someone was passing secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Someone had to be brought to justice for this act of treason, and in a rush to find an unpopular scapegoat, the court charged a young artillery officer named Alfred Dreyfus with the crime. They had selected him for one simple reason: he was Jewish

THE PRESENT CONTAINS NOTHING MORE THAN THE PAST, AND WHAT IS FOUND IN THE EFFECT WAS ALREADY IN THE CAUSE.