126 FRENCH PERSONALITIES AND PROBLEMS
He did not even take the easy way out when Victor Emmanuel, for
once, justified some of the monarchist doctrine by getting nd of
the Duce. He now refused to sec who it was, in fact, he served. His
official French nationalism was like those inverted and diabolic
symbols that are, it is said, to be found in some Provencal churches.
By the time liberation came, there was no turning back.
As far as Maurras was affected by a poet, he was affected by
Dante and the Greeks. And he would have, been at home among
the bitter exiles of the Black Guclf party or in the Corcyra of
Thucydides or the Athens of the Thirty Tyrants, Like a passionate
Greek, he had finally sacrificed all to be the unregarded counsellor
of the tyrant of his city. But unlike Dante, he had no notion of the
role of Beatrice, his journey ended long before the Purgatory, much
less the Paradise where is to be experienced "Tamor che move il
sole e Faltre stelle." Maurras, in prison, may think of his lost
province, of the golden urbanity of Nimcs, of the majesty of the
Pont du Gard. But his real home is not with the Roman ruins or
Greek foundations of Provence and Languedoc, but in the ruined
castle of Les Baux, in the fantastic valley where, so some have
thought, Dante found the landscape of the Inferno in whose deeper
circles he has thrust, with admiration but no dubiety, the great
sinners who fell by pride. Even at this moment, of all the men whom
the French nation has rightly tried and condemned, Maurras is
put in a different class from the Suarez and B6rauds, Lavals and
Doriots. It is only a few weeks since a resistance leader, in private,
expressed his understanding of the power of the unshaken old
man. And in refusing to appeal, to retract, to repent for a moment
the odious role he had adopted for himself, Maurras has a sufficiently
dignified and illustrious exemplar, As long as he lives we may be
sure that his pride and confidence in his doctrine will sustain him;
" ... What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield/5