As shocked as she was by Pétain’s capitulation, Fourcade was even more stunned by the joyful reaction of the people around her to the news. They laughed, kissed each other, and drank to Pétain’s health. Such happy scenes, which the novelist Arthur Koestler later described as “the apocalypse [disguised] as a family picnic,” were repeated throughout the country. As Fourcade saw it, the French, in their understandable relief that the war had ended for them, failed to recognize that in the process, they and their country had lost their souls.
