Saturday, July 23, 2011
Détruire, C'est Toujours Joli
James Pope-Hennessy, Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise 1809-1851 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc.. 1955), p. 135:
Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), In the Forest
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.
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The precarious political situation was having, in that winter of 1840, one visible effect on Paris. Fortifications were being rapidly thrown up, but no one would confess to Milnes their precise purpose. Guizot told him that their great value was that the Parisians would never need to use them. Montalembert pointed out that they were being built in a typically democratic manner, by cutting down the trees of the Bois de Boulogne. A cabby sadly told him that the Government were destroying the Bois—'et détruire, c'est toujours joli.'
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.
Labels: arboricide
