As France deteriorates, it didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that Macron's words to the Corsicans would inspire a number of different peoples. The Bretons are now calling for this kind of autonomy and the Occitans are thinking about it - without really knowing what this autonomy will be about, other than that it would involve enshrining a region in the constitution as a historical, cultural and linguistic community. Then, of course, there shall is pure dissidence. As absurd as in Catalonia.

   Why not the Île d'Aix, in a condominium with you and its neighbours, Oléron and Ré? Napoleon stayed there before going into exile in St Helena. There's even a hotel named after the emperor. But the dialect is not the same as that of Corsica, a Tuscan dialect, the same as that of the Emperor. It's hard to make the connection. But these islands have their own culture, history and jargon, just like Corsica, Brittany and all the others. The various regional languages are tending to reappear. France will soon be a jigsaw puzzle, or rather a cacophony, if we listen to what they want. But no one is trying, as in previous centuries, to forbid people from babbling in their own idiom and with their own accent. All we need is a common language to understand each other without having to fill in bilingual forms. So why teach everything in the local dialect? If, sooner or later, comrades, in Europe, where we are, a common language will be imposed. By force of circumstance. Of course. Just as the French of the twelfth century evolved into what we know today (read the Lais of Marie de France, whose language already had nothing to do with the Romanesque of 842, which would become French, of the Strasbourg Oath).

   Tomorrow, our great-grandchildren will no longer speak as we do. And I'd be surprised if Breton, Basque, Occitan, Corsican or any other language survived one day in this evolutionary melting pot, with or without an article in a constitution. Just as German, Spanish and Italian will disappear as they mix with English, French, Slavic and Nordic languages. Books will be there to remind us, and that will be enough to teach them to anyone who wants to learn them, like Latin or ancient Greek.

   A rearguard action if ever there was one, the skirmish of nationalists of all stripes is only a look into the past. They don't know the future. They are like old people at the end of the year dinner. All moaning about their ailments and telling stories of their lives before, hoping for only one thing, to relive their youth. Not a single one of them projects into the future. Not one octogenarian to plant the tree of his fable with La Fontaine. Sad to death!

   Keep your traditions, no one is stopping you, but this culture that we all share and that has made our history, a collection of diversity that enriches our European heritage every day before a new specificity emerges from this magma, does not isolate you in your reals or virtuals islands. On the contrary, it allows you to survive.