bring back the king

For three weeks now I've been attending a two-weekly conversation circle organized by the local chapter of the Alliance Française and run by an eclectic bunch of volunteers. Despite its name, it's almost a full-fledged language class, sauf the focus is not on Grammar, and it's free. I talk less than I do in lab these days, but I learn a lot about French language and culture. And I have a great time.

Today, we spoke about history. No, hang on, Bernard, the volunteer, spoke about history, and he held the entire little group spellbound for more than ninety minutes. When I was in high-school, this was the subject I detested the most. Millions of seemingly unrelated events, all with their own particular significance. No logical flow ever revealed itself to me. Plus, too many numbers to remember.

These days I have the suspicion that history is very similar to chemistry. It is completely impenetrable to a school kid, but once you get older and start to think about it seriously, you'll eventually see the light. The bits and pieces, be it hydroxyl groups or defense forces, nucleophilic attacks or revolutionary wars, just fall into place, and everything makes perfect sense at some point.

Usually, when this point is reached, complacency takes over, and you'll slowly but inexorably lose your acumen. My vision of chemistry is getting dimmer each day spent without explaining the reactive properties of an aldehyde group to someone. In contrast, I've read quite a bit of history and I'm hopeful that the fog will clear.

That's why I was mesmerized by Bernard. His history of France started with the Gauls but was all kings shortly after. The revolution of 1789, the greatest day of the country according to popular opinion, was a complete disaster. Public order was overturned, countless were killed, the country slipped into darkness. France's best days were over. What came after it – Napoleon, one more king, an invasion by Prussia, and two world wars – fit easily into one sentence.

Bernard is a royalist. After the class, we talked a little and he complained that a president elected for seven years by a minority of citizens, a person hardly representative of his subjects, can't be expected to do anything good for the country. In light of the current president I have to concur, but I don't think that 20% of the vote, which fell to Chirac in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, are worse than the 0% that a king would get.

While I might not like having a king, I like hearing unorthodox views. Not much beats a fiercely fought argument – concluded with a beer afterwards.