entrusted to himself; you will inevitably perish unless you manage your own affair by rely-ing on yourself. And the trouble of it is that you perish without anyone knowing of you, and without anyone turning to look at you. What a mighty examination of the individual it is, laying bare his deepest depths and his most hidden secrets, bringing out his virtues, just as it exposes — openly and scandalously — his vices and his faults. Among these vices, which the excess of the French in giving themselves over to this life of individualism has laid bare, is the chaos of living conditions spread through the country, arising from the disorder of the market and the failure to organize it in a form that might create some stability in this living, and some peace of mind in the souls of those who have no wish to plunge into the black market. The prices of food and necessities, for instance, are not applied at a single rate even in the restaurants and commer-cial houses classed as first-rate. Each of these restaurants and shops imposes on its customers the price it deems suited to its own interest alone, throwing every other economic and social consideration to the winds. And here is another example of this chaos: the government imposed upon the whole market a reduc-tion of 10 percent. What did the second-class restaurants do in the face of this decree? Instead of complying with this order of the government, they resorted to a cunning trick, and increased their receipts by 10 percent instead of reducing them by 10 percent. The gist of the trick is this: the proprietresses of these restau-rants (most of them, in Paris and some of the suburbs, are run by women) announced the reduction both on the doors of their restaurants and at the head of the card that bears the names of the dishes with their prices beside

them. But they deliberately omit-ted to mention the 10 percent set aside for service. So when the time of reckoning comes and you set about paying for the meal, the serving woman demands the "ser-vice" of you — although those who wait upon the restaurant are its own proprietresses; and you then discover that the price you paid for this meal exceeded its basic price by 10 percent.

Among these vices, too, is a great one, conspicuous today in most of them: the loss of the sense of the group, or, to speak more exactly, the loss of the social sense — that noble sense which settles in every individual the conviction that he is of society and for it. Every individual here lives for himself alone, as though he were saying: after me, the deluge. The trace of the Frenchmen's swerving toward this dangerous side of life is plain and evident in most of their doings and in the several departments of their life — political, literary, and social. Every Frenchman insists on having his own particular opinion in politics, in letters, and in social matters. And he is quick to change the direction of that opinion the moment it becomes clear to him that there is a group of people who also hold that opinion or one like it. Hence arose those parties and political and other institutions in France whose number cannot be counted.

The nature of some of the French resembles their local climate — that is, it is in constant change and transformation. Hardly do you go out for a stroll, fully assured that fair skies are the weather that will keep that day company, before the sky surprises you with its clouds and its lightning and its thunder and its rains, which set about pelting you with their sweeping torrents — and it may go on for hours in this fashion.

Paris, 28/7/1947