So Patrick Bruel, that crooner of Gallic sentiment, finds himself formally investigated for rape. The news arrives with a shrug from the métro, a weary sigh from the Académie. We are meant to be shocked, I suppose.
But are we? In an age when the intellectual edifice of the West crumbles faster than a stale baguette, a celebrity rape investigation is merely another stone falling from the aqueduct. Bruel, a man who serenaded French mothers and their daughters for decades, now sits under the shadow of extradition.
The British, with their quaint notions of justice and sovereignty, might yet decide his fate. And what a delicious irony: a Frenchman fleeing English justice, a reversal of the old Norman conquest. But this is no comedy.
This is the late Empire, where even our idols are revealed as hollow, where the legal machinery grinds on with a tedious inevitability. We shall see if he is extradited. We shall see if France has the stomach to examine its own decadence.
I suspect not. They will waffle about 'présomption d'innocence' while the rot deepens. Meanwhile, Bruel's songs will play on, a soundtrack to a nation in denial.
