'The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. ' -Paul Valery
By the time the Nazis had occupied France, the decorated French writer Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valery was a member of the Academie Francaise and the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, and he held a number of academic positions. His defiance of the installed Vichy government hardly slowed him down, and he continued to be a vital part of the existing cultural life of France during the occupation. He died in 1945, having lived long enough to see France returned to the French.