Not to mention, of course, group number three, the Third World contingent: almost a million refugees, biding their time, waiting for daylight on their grounded ships, and caught in the rhythmic sweep of a giant searchlight, mounted on the roof of the villa, like the culture the biologist checks in his microscope now and again, to make sure his microbes are still alive and kicking. (We can forget the fifty-five million Frenchmen, stunned by the noxious gases of modern thought, paralyzed where they stood, in grotesque positions, as if some director had frozen the background action on stage, to emphasize only the essentials.) The one common quality all three forces possessed was a consummate scorn. Could that be one explanation? …
