Stanislas Fréron: “The ideas that were considered dangerous twenty years ago are now commonplaces of establishment discourse –yet people still die on the streets every winter, they still starve. And we, in our turn, are militant against the existing order only because of our personal failure to progress up its sordid ladder. If Fabre, for example, were elected to the Academy tomorrow, you would see his lust for social revolution turning overnight into the most douce and debonair conformity . . . . all these professional Americans, professional Irishmen, professional Genevans –all the governments in exile, and the hacks, scribblers, failed lawyers –all those men who profess to hate what they most desire.”
D’Anton: “You can afford to say it. Your family is favoured, your paper’s on the right side of the censors. A radical opinion is a luxury you may allow yourself.”
A Place of Greater Safety, pg. 140