206 - Georges BERNANOS (1888–1948). Signed autograph manuscript, titled *Les bien-pensants n’ont plus de père* or *Amputation sous chloroforme* or *Abdication*. 5 pp., in-4. Text written in blue ink on lined paper. Titles in pencil. Deletions, corrections, and additions. Traces of a paper clip.

Georges BERNANOS (1888–1948). Signed autograph manuscript, titled *Les bien-pensants n’ont plus de père* or *Amputation sous chloroforme* or *Abdication*. 5 pp., in-4. Text written in blue ink on lined paper. Titles in pencil. Deletions, corrections, and additions. Traces of a paper clip. A scathing article by Bernanos regarding Aristide Briand’s defeat in May 1931 during the presidential election, following which he was ousted from the Laval government in early 1932. Bernanos lambasts the press for its coverage of this “abdication” and mocks the dictator of the Quai d’Orsay and his legendary eye—moist and bulging, as if boiled in the spices of lies and illusion. The unofficial press—the press of dispatches and press releases, whose language, now international, is probably one of the most extraordinary creations of the modern world—has just outdone itself on the occasion of the departure—if I may put it that way—of Mr. Aristide Briand. Never have a handful of conventional expressions—bleached to the point of abstraction and appearing harmless only to the public—better expressed, in a few striking phrases, the denouement of a great parliamentary intrigue. Should we even call it a denouement? The term “intervention” would be more appropriate—taken, of course, in the somewhat specialized sense that surgeons give it. Deep down, this chronic inflammation, this vast congestion that serious doctors considered incurable and for which they advised promoting suppuration, resembled those false ulcers that Breton beggar women maintain with nettle poultices. As soon as the foreigner deigned to stop rubbing, scratching, scraping, and heating, what had seemed inflamed down to its very fibers cooled almost instantly: a single flick of the thumb was enough to safely remove the now-useless organ. After the Defenestration of Prague—a model for parliamentary solutions—history may perhaps cite, in even more cryptic terms, the enucleation of Monsieur Briand [ ]. This article appeared on February 12, 1932, in *Le Figaro*.