Renesis

I am returned, dear reader! La Douce France was sweet as always. The fragrant herbs of Provence filled my nostrils and my soul with incomparable vitality. The rich soil of my Motherland, into which my roots of nigh a hundred years... Oh well, why don't I shut up? It would be a little too sad to lose all my readers the very day I recommence writing...

I will soon discourse on the state of my native nation. But not today. Today I will leave you with a most marvelous anecdote, told to me by a friend, concerning one of the very best ripostes I have heard of in a long while. 

Moses Montefiore was a Jewish plutocrat and benefactor, and by the looks of it a very smart fellow. One day he found himself, much against his will, dining with a known, and very provocative anti-semite. 'Do you know Japan?' the anti-semite asked him. 'It's a wonderful country. They have neither pigs nor Jews there.'

Montefiore smiled affably. 'You know,' he spoke. 'You and I, we ought to go there together. That way they'd at least have a specimen of each.'

If that, dear reader, isn't a good return, then I do not know what is!