A Beguiling Country, Still.(France)

I fell in love with France on a cold morning in 1973. Jet-lagged and restless, I had just landed in Paris with my family. We'd arrived too early to check into our hotel so, cranky and out of sorts, we roamed the streets, then parked ourselves at a tiny round table outside a Left Bank cafe. Though I was only 7 years old, I remember, vividly, taking my first sip of a thick chocolat, biting into a buttery pain aux raisins and thinking Yes, yes, France will do nicely.

I was just one more Lambert Strether, the dutiful and humorless Yankee of Henry James's "The Ambassadors," coming to France to rescue a wayward young man from the corruptions of the Continent, only to end up having his own Hot Chocolate Moment. No other country has ever bewitched Americans quite like France. American painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries loved the Paris of skylights and louche women. The Lost Generation of the 1920s came, essentially, for the cheap eats and red wine. In the 1950s, the glamour of Cap Ferrat and the swagger of Yves Saint Laurent drew us, while in the 1960s and 1970s, bearded, shaggy American students played guitar along the Pont des Arts and stopped by the American Express office, near the Opera, to see if Mom had persuaded Dad to send money because, really, France was Educational and Broadening and An Experience.

Which it still is, actually, though it's hard to keep that in mind as many Americans, simmering with Iraq-induced rage, refuse to drink French wine, eat French cheese or even visit the place. And like many longtime love affairs, this one is fading not because either party has changed, but because each now knows the other so well that the magic is gone.

Where France once saw our brash energy and vital optimism, they now see bullying arrogance. Where we were once in the thrall of their cultural subtlety and worldly wisdom--waddling around Parisian streets in sneakers and Sansabelt shorts, grimly trying ...