The Glory of France

Director of the Foreign Legion's Institution for the Disabled in Puyloubier, my duties required me to make numerous visits to the various workshops. During one of these visits, I visited my friend Louis, who was the head of the ceramics workshop.
That day, he was preoccupied with a commission to paint an image representing "the glory of France" on a very large lava slab, which would then be kiln-fired to ensure its durability. The only problem was that Louis had no idea how to interpret this "challenge"; no inspiration was forthcoming to enlighten his creative genius. Out of friendship, I shared his dismay, and I, too, couldn't see how, with a few strokes of the pencil, one could represent "France" as it was seen throughout the world. Above all, I didn't need an explanatory caption; the work itself should represent "the glory of France."

To encourage my friend, I explained to him that the great painter Delacroix had probably encountered this kind of problem when creating this historical painting, which was to depict a revolutionary image. The idea of ​​this bare-breasted woman, dressed like an Athena from the Folies Bergères, must have been the result of long moments of reflection, but this vagabond wearing a Phrygian cap could just as easily represent Uruguay, Poland, Finland, or elsewhere...
We exchanged several ideas, without neglecting the most bizarre ones, and ended up tired and dejected; we had no other solution than to agree on a choice. possible of the effigy of a beautiful young woman with a pleasant silhouette, a beautiful aspect of freedom and femininity embellished by a provocative warrior attitude. The painting had to be imbued with bright colors for the best artistic effect, the whole had to bring a beautiful emotion. However, we were not satisfied, quickly, we changed course and thought of the image of a soldier, a young hero in the service of defense and freedom. Our imagination took flight, we improvised a pictorial composition where appeared in front of the enemy battalions, a young man with a dazzling smile dressed in the horizon blue “costume”. Our historical character had just symbolically plucked a flower from a field, around him a chaos of mud, shrapnel and blood, our hero had just pinned this flower to the buttonhole of his unbuttoned greatcoat. The young woman had transformed, with a stroke of the magic brush, into a virtuous young man, drunk with youth, the future and peace.

Dissatisfied, we urgently needed to find something else and restart our research. We were moving forward in a thick cultural fog, aware of our frustrating helplessness. A resident of the institution who was passing by addressed these few words to us which left us speechless: “Excuse me, gentlemen, I know I am intruding on your thoughts, but I overheard, by a happy coincidence, your conversation which was expressed in very high-flown words, those used by enthusiasts, and my natural curiosity could not but be solicited. I think I can help you, if you allow me. We must, quite simply, take as a model the Gallic rooster, which is today the indisputable symbol of France, the equivalent of the bald eagle of the USA, the elephant of the Ivory Coast, the German eagle, the Chinese panda or the lean Italian wolf; it is the emblem which appears on many church steeples, a reminder of the rooster in the Gospel which crowed three times. This proud animal dominates a good number of war memorials. Do not take as an example the cynical and ironic presentation used by a "A public entertainer who makes the animal sing in the mud, but show the fighter more than the singer, what could be more beautiful than an aggressive animal ready to defend, at the risk of death, its territory and those under its protection?"

The Elder had just given us a fine lesson, and so Louis created a majestic rooster in the national colors. It was perched proudly on a block of stone on which appeared engraved in relief a very beautiful young woman embraced by our hero in a horizon blue suit. The two young people, promised a bright future, looked at the horizon against the backdrop of a purple twilight rendered blurred... by a light winter rain.

Christian Morisot