A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

by Julian T. Jackson

Brossolette put himself at the service of the Free French and returned to France as an agent of the BCRAM. The next arrival was d’Astier on 12 May. As leader of his own Resistance movement, Libération-Sud, d’Astier certainly had no intention of putting himself completely at de Gaulle’s service. Even stripped of its ironic and literary tone, his later account of his first meeting with de Gaulle at the Connaught is remarkably similar to that of Pineau: The Symbol entered. He was even bigger than one expected. His movements were slow and heavy, like his nose. His small head and waxen face are supported by a body which seems to have no shape. His most frequent gesture is to lift his forearms while keeping his elbows close to his side. At the end of his arms, his inert, very white, rather feminine, hands with their palms turned downwards attached to very slender wrists, seem to lift a world of abstract burdens. He asked me no questions. We dined. He does not like his fellow men. He likes their history, above all that of France, of which he was acting out a chapter which he seemed to be writing in his head as he went on, as if he were Michelet … He spoke as if he were bearing a thousand years of history or as if he watched himself in that history a hundred years in the future. He painted a bleak picture of his Calvary – that of the person that was France.10