The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

Monumental naïveté had been both his making and his unmaking. And destruction at the end for such a spirit thus became no less inevitable or blameworthy than it had been for, say, Joan of Arc, such being the real world’s reward for sainted madness. But as events receded farther into the distance, he became something rather different. He was seen more and more as the tragic victim of earthly forces beyond his control: of the satanic jungle; of ambitious technical advisers willing to say anything, conceal anything, to satisfy their own selfish ends; of unscrupulous financiers (who to many people would be forever regarded as unscrupulous Jewish financiers). The fatal mortal flaw according to this interpretation had been to grow old. Once during the affaire de Panamá, a newspaper had suggested quite sympathetically that it might have been better had Ferdinand de Lesseps died earlier, at the peak of his career, and Madame de Lesseps had written a moving reply that was quoted widely, then and for years to come.