The End of Innocence

By 1914, French society had become scandal-hardened. Each new revelation produced diminishing shock. The Caillaux trial's drama couldn't match Dreyfus's intensity. Financial frauds seemed routine. Sexual scandals barely raised eyebrows. Scandal inflation reduced impact.

The approaching war would provide ultimate scandal—the civilization priding itself on progress descending into barbarism. The Belle Époque's scandals had revealed violence, corruption, and hatred beneath polished surfaces. The war would strip away remaining illusions.

Yet scandal culture had also created more open society. Topics previously unmentionable entered public discourse. Authority faced questioning. Traditional hierarchies lost automatic respect. The Belle Époque's scandals, for all their sensationalism and exploitation, had democratized criticism.

Standing before the military court in 1899 for his retrial, Dreyfus maintained the dignity that had sustained him through five years of unjust imprisonment. His vindication—partial, grudging, but real—showed scandal's possibility for justice. The sensation-seeking public that had howled for his blood had also, eventually, demanded his freedom. Scandal revealed the worst of Belle Époque society but also mobilized its better angels. The age of scandal was ending, but its legacy of exposure, accountability, and public engagement would outlive the era that perfected it. In teaching France to question everything, scandal culture prepared the critical spirit that would survive the Belle Époque's beautiful illusions.# Chapter 12: The End of an Era (1910-1914)

On the evening of July 31, 1914, Jean Jaurès sat at the Café du Croissant on the rue Montmartre, discussing with colleagues his desperate last efforts to prevent war through international socialist solidarity. The café's windows were open to the summer heat, and through them drifted the sounds of a Paris still vibrating with life—the clip-clop of horses, the honk of automobiles, the laughter from nearby theaters. At 9:40 PM, Raoul Villain, a young nationalist fanatic, fired two shots through those windows. Jaurès slumped forward, blood spreading across the white tablecloth. Within minutes, France's greatest voice for peace was dead. Within days, the world would be at war. The Belle Époque, that beautiful epoch of progress and pleasure, innovation and illusion, was ending not with a whimper but with a bang that would echo across the twentieth century.