First Sentence

"On a quiet corner of the rue des Ecoles, a street close to the Sorbonne in the heart of Paris's Latin Quarter, there stands today a statue of the sixteenth-century humanist, Michel de Montaigne, whose essays were read by Shakespeare and remain a landmark of European literature and thought. The statue is clearly intended to celebrate not only one of France's great intellectuals, but also Paris itself, for beneath the seated figure of Montaigne are lines which read like a love-letter to the city: I do not want to forget this, that I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood [. . .] I am a Frenchman only by this great city: great in population, great in the felicity of her situation, but above all great and incomparable in the variety and diversity of the good things of life; the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world."