"Our language"! Over the top of the pages that our grandmother was reading out to us, my sister and I looked at one another, struck by the same insight. "… Which for you is not a foreign language." So that was it, the key to our Atlantis! Language, that mysterious substance, invisible and omnipresent, whose sonorous essence reached into every corner of the universe we were in the process of exploring. This language that shaped men, molded objects, rippled in verse, bellowed in streets invaded by crowds, caused a young tsarina who had come from the other end of the world to smile… But above all throbbed within us, like a magical graft implanted in our hearts, already bringing forth leaves and flowers, bearing within it the fruit of a whole civilization. Yes, this implant, the French language.

And it was thanks to this twig blossoming within us that we gained access that evening to the box prepared to welcome the imperial couple at the Comédie Française. We unfolded the program: Un Caprice by Alfred de Musset; fragments from Le Cid; the third act of Les Femmes savantes. At that time we had not read any of those. It was a slight change of timbre in Charlotte s voice that enabled us to grasp the importance of these names for the inhabitants of Atlantis.

The curtain rose. The whole company was onstage in ceremonial roles. The leading player stepped forward, bowed, and spoke of a country that we did not immediately recognize:

Like a vast world, there is a country fair, Whose far horizons never terminate, Whose soul is rich and rare, Great in the past, in future yet more great.

Blond with her corn, white with the white of snow, Leaders and men, her sons walk firm and sure. Let fate smile on her so She harvests gold on virgin earth and pure.