I thank you, Sir, and through you I thank the Ministry of Education and the nation of France, for the honor you have granted me.

Like many American men and women of my generation, I have been in love with France since I was a small child, a love that was borne along, doubtless, by a desire linked first to its language and then to its literature.  For me, France means the language of my favorite authors, the language of Villon, Ronsard, and Montaigne, of Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Lafayette, of Racine, Rousseau (the Rousseau of The Confessions), Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Colette, and Proust: above all and always, I would say, the language of Marcel Proust.

This language and literature were passed on to me in part by French professors, women of French origin teaching in the United States, by three of them in particular whose affection and intelligence nourished me at different moments of my life and career, in different ways, for over forty years.  I would therefore like to take this occasion to give my thanks not only to you, Sir, and to France, but also to Madame Germaine Brée, the late Madame Micheline Dufau, and Madame Yvonne Ozzello.