An Irishman's Diary

I WATCHED last weekend’s Ireland-France rugby match in one of Paris’s Irish pubs – the Coolin in St Germain – and it was a somewhat disconcerting experience. The Coolin is fairly hard-core Hibernian: it’s official sponsor of the Paris Gaels GAA club, for one thing. In, fact there’s a €2 discount off the price of a pint for recognised club members.

I’m not sure how this works: maybe there’s a codeword or secret handshake. But after being charged the lower rate, I spent half an hour congratulating myself on still having the physique of a GAA player until someone ruined my day by pointing out that it was happy hour and all drinks were cut-price. Sure enough, the next one cost more.

That wasn’t the disconcerting thing, though. The disconcerting thing was that, as rugby kick-off neared, it became clear that, despite this being the nearest you could get to Irish sovereign territory in Paris outside the embassy, we had been heavily infiltrated by the enemy.

Some of the imposters were easier to spot than others: they had red, white, and blue flags or the odd beret. But some were undercover agents, betraying their identity in subtler ways. The man beside me, for example, who, while trying to pass himself as a beer-drinker, was nursing a half pint and sipping it very slowly, like vintage Bordeaux.

It was only when the anthems were struck up that the strengths of the competing forces became clear. Ireland's Callprovoked the usual mixture of self-conscious singing and embarrassment. Then came the Marseillaise, at which point most of the French leapt to their feet to assure us, in the jaunty lyrics of the chorus, that they would soon be irrigating their fields with the "impure blood" of the invaders.

Rugby aside, my latest visit to Paris left me marvelling at France's latter-day reputation – in a line from The Simpsons, gleefully appropriated by US neocons – as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". Because everywhere you go in this city there are monuments to soldiers: reminders that France's conversion to pacifism, if it happened at all, is a recent phenomenon.

As chance would have it, I found myself in another bar at the weekend (I visited museums too – honestly), this time a very French one, the Closerie de Lilas. A favourite of Beckett and others, the Closerie was where a hard-up Hemingway wrote much of his early stuff. But it’s gone a bit up-market since then. I had a pint there too and suffice to say there was no GAA rate.

It was a hefty €9, in fact. Yet not even possession of a €9 pint was licence to relax in the company. On the contrary, I soon found myself outflanked, left and right, by cocktail-drinking couples, whose rounds were a lot more expensive than mine: a fact acknowledged by the little bowls of crisps with which the bartender favoured them, while notably snubbing me.

Nearby, a jazz pianist lent the cocktail drinkers covering fire. So the situation was already uncomfortable when I remembered – avec horreur!– meaning to go to the ATM earlier, and forgetting. Could one pay for a pint with a credit card, I wondered, searching pockets. And the discovery that my cash reserves totalled exactly €9.04, while a relief, was not completely reassuring.

Any last shred of sophistication in my demeanour vanished when I gave the waiter a grubby bundle of coins, in all denominations, saying " C'est exact!" – as if this was a virtue – to distract from the fact that he wouldn't be getting a tip. With that, I beat an inglorious retreat (modern French style) from the Courtyard of the Lilacs.

Moments later, I was regrouping on the street outside, under the fierce-looking statue of yet another military hero, who turned out on closer inspection to be the famous Marshal Ney.

There he was, the man Napoleon called “the bravest of the brave”, his sword drawn, ready to cut down anyone who insulted his country. There too, underneath him, was the list of his major battles. It was an absurdly long list: Napoleon’s marshals collected military engagements like, today, some people collect frequent flier points.

But as with his commander, the list ended at Waterloo. As a result of his actions during the “100 days” after Bonaparte’s return, Ney was sentenced to death for sedition. Even then his record had to be respected, however. So, in short, he was given the honour of ordering his own execution.

His reported final moments, near where the statue stands, were magnificent. “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart,” he told the shooting party; “Wait for the order. It will be my last to you.” He then briefly protested his innocence, claiming – with little exaggeration:“I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her”. Which said, he concluded (in more ways than one): “Soldiers, Fire!” The legend is marred slightly by a rumour that his execution was faked, with the soldiers’ complicity, and that he was then smuggled to America where he survived to die of old age 30 years later. That probably didn’t happen. And even if it did, it’s a good thing for all concerned that Marshal Ney wasn’t still around to hear anyone describe his compatriots, jokingly or otherwise, as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.