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Medical examiner Anne Martinat Sainte-Beuve said that in the wake of her husband's arrest, Gisèle was clearly traumatised but calm and distant – a coping mechanism often employed by survivors of terrorist attacks.

Ms Sainte-Beuve said she had found Gisèle "exceptionally resilient": "She turned what could have destroyed her into strength."

It was through Saintsbury I came to read the French, especially Sainte-Beuve, and another critical line that interested me was Peacock/Meredith/Huxley.

“In just under 400 pages, Mr. Calasso manages to quote Goethe, Sainte-Beuve, the Upanishads, Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough,’ ‘Das Kapital,’ the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius . . . and several hundred other works in several languages,” the literary biographer James Atlas wrote in the Times.

“Sainte-Beuve’s method ignores what a very slight degree of self-acquaintance teaches us,” he wrote.