Gilles Martin-Chauffier’s weekly column.
© Sipa
Like a balcony, the Bois de la Chèvre is anchored on three sides in the Gulf of Morbihan. Behind the stern lies the Pointe de Brouel. At high tide, it’s like being on the deck of a boat. The promontory hugs the slumbering water in the colors of slate. Pure, simple, elegant, strong and slender, the pines raise their dark trunks like crosses. Du Vran, a little further away, in winter it looks like specters calling for help. Sliding on a carpet of needles, their roots look like crawling snakes. In the early morning, without a fold, tender as grass, the gulf resembles an immense meadow of cool gray grass. The air is so clear that you could count the waves. One wonders who has piled up at the foot of the wood these huge piles of stones, polished, rounded and softened by the sea. A desert calm reigns, pure as the cold.
The tired softness of the wind, the voluptuous caress of silence, the silent chills of the flow, the indecisive horizon, the serenity of emptiness, the low day, the melancholy light, nothing catches the eye in this marine garden. Life has died out. When it passes, the rain has under the pines a peaceful sweetness and the impalpable freshness of a wet vapor. Without haste, squadrons of clouds march past which the rays of the sun suddenly push back like light cushions. Suddenly, everything lights up. Puddles of light varnish the rocks with sparkling scales of mica, enamel, mother-of-pearl and silver. Life is rekindled and fifty shades of gray and gold serve as the gulf’s flag. You are in L’Île-aux-Moines, in paradise on earth. Called upon by a virus, the world may well stop, nothing changes here. At the time of Saint-Barthélemy, the Fronde, the capture of the Tuileries and the Commune, everything was the same: the branches leaned towards the water as if they were thirsty, the sea whispered, the armored crabs were waddled, the seagulls scattered and the islanders prayed for their sons who had embarked on Newfoundland.
In politics, all candidates know how to do is talk well about what is going wrong.
Except that the year 2022 will begin and that we will have to return to Paris, leave the sets of Queen Guinevere and find France in electoral hysteria. And, again, everything will be the same. In politics, no one is going to announce what they really intend to do, nor will they do what they say. We don’t even hope so. Our dreams remain modest. All pretenders know how to do is talk well about what’s going wrong. And all they do then is laws. France is marching at the law: 58 in 2020! A Himalayan of inaccessible texts supposed to change our lives without anyone ever noticing.
If only, this time around, they didn’t take us for children. Emmanuel Macron could tell us that he is a candidate since everyone knows it. We do not all have the patience of Audrey Crespo-Mara and Darius Rochebin, the two court abbots who came to tickle the soul of the monarch. Valerie Pécresse , she should not complain that the president was given two hours on TF1 when she herself had them four times on four other channels to explain her projects. All could also stop quoting police officers, judges and nurses, when one dreams of reducing the number of civil servants in a country of which they themselves mock the administrative millefeuille. And then they stop wanting to change the Constitution! Where does this fad that no one asks them come from in a country where most of the inhabitants lead narrow lives like a hallway? However, let’s not count on the left to take advantage of it. Before, it was on fire. His mantra was, “I spend, therefore I am.” Now she is sending the wrong-thinking to the stake. But don’t convert many people anymore. As the ultimate spare wheel, it resuscitates a candidate who had made 2.3% in the 2002 presidential election. And who can believe the chances of a rebellious leader whom all friends are afraid of, from Castro to Maduro and Bernie Sanders to Jeremy Corbin?
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Even environmentalists mobilize little. So little even that the president did not find a say in global warming during his two hours of penitential coquetry. Yet it is a vital subject, the only one in fact. Much more than betting on whether Éric Zemmour will wait until all his copyright has blazed before packing up. Whatever, they are the ones we are going to bite into for four months. Fortunately, we know it well, as Clemenceau said: “It was not eagles who saved the Capitol.”