[OPINION] Historians are hailing accused 19th-century spy Alfred Dreyfus as a hero, not a simple victim of anti-Semitism. In 1899, a broken Alfred Dreyfus accepted a presidential pardon — and its implication that he had committed treason against France. It was a matter of life or death, for Dreyfus feared that he would not survive the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island, where he had been sent after a military court convicted him of betraying his country. Those who believed that he was innocent and had called for his exoneration were deeply disappointed. "We were prepared to die for Dreyfus," said poet Charles Péguy, "but Dreyfus was not." His decision to accept a pardon is one of the cornerstones of a long-standing French perception that Dreyfus is the model of a submissive victim. But on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his exoneration in 1906 and the official end of the tumultuous affair that convulsed France for a dozen years, that view may be changing. Indeed, some historians see Dreyfus the patriot, not Dreyfus the victim...

Coming upon a remote Romanesque church from almost 1,000 years ago is one of the pleasures of traveling through the countryside of Europe. But these structures, put up when the tribes that had destroyed the Roman Empire were emerging from their Dark Ages, are almost bare, their sculptures, reliquaries and manuscripts often squirreled away in diocesan and regional museums in distant towns. It is hard to get a good sense of this unusual art. Until this year, France -- which claims the richest collections -- had never organized a major national exhibition of Romanesque art. The Louvre Museum in Paris has finally erased that neglect with an impressive show of more than 300 works titled “Romanesque France: In the Time of the First Capetian Kings (987-1152),” which runs through next Monday...

The oldest museums in America have their storerooms full of paintings that were the rage in art more than a century ago but are now out of fashion. This gloomy repose is often the fate of the 19th century Barbizon painters of France. Their paintings were once prized by collectors all over the world, but the Barbizon painters had the misfortune to work just before the Impressionists came on the scene. These younger painters eclipsed them long ago. A Barbizon show is thus a rare and pleasant chance to look closely at a group of wonderful landscape painters whose work paved the way for the now more famous Impressionist artists. Curator Simon Kelly of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has dipped into his stores and those of the Baltimore Museum of Art to help put on that kind of show. Of the 48 works in the show owned by the Walters, 34 have not been exhibited for decades. Called “The Road to Impressionism: Landscapes from Corot to Monet,” the exhibition runs until Jan. 17 at the Walters. There are no plans for the exhibition to travel. Kelly has assembled 70 works from the most distinguished painters who lived or worked in Barbizon, a village on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau 35 miles south of Paris...

The small genre masterpieces of the French painters of the 18th century are so frothy, so delightful, so charming and sometimes so naughty that it is hard to associate them with such weighty themes as philosophy and revolution. But an extraordinary exhibition of these paintings, currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, makes the persuasive case that these great artists, no matter how frivolous their subjects often seemed, reflected the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment that coursed through France during these decades and laid the groundwork for the French Revolution. A visitor does not need to know all this to savor these wonderful works, but the historical dimension adds a special flavor that helps bind the artists together...

There was a time -- romantic in French history -- when French Indochina with its capital of Hanoi shimmered as one of the jewels of the French colonial empire. Thousands of French administrators and teachers and merchants and police lived in Hanoi. The brightest and richest Vietnamese studied at elite French schools there. French law, French bureaucracy and French communications dominated life in the colony. And a visitor could taste a little bit of France and its elegance in the best hotels and restaurants...

As an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston shows us, the queen of cities was definitely the place to be at the fin de siècle...

Delacroix, Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin. Seurat, Degas, Matisse and thousands of other French artists, many penniless then and still unknown, had studios in Paris. Foreigners such as Sargent, Whistler, Chagall and Miró felt they had no choice but to rush there. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, almost all artists looked to Paris as their mecca. In this unusual and carefully illustrated book, John Milner, head of the Department of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England, describes how French tradition and government policy, along with Parisian commerce and practical necessity, combined to create a kind of factory of art in Paris in the 19th century...

Riot police swinging truncheons rushed into the Bank of France before dawn Wednesday and forced aside a mass of striking workers to lead two besieged bank officials out of the venerable building. The show of force, which, ironically, came on a day when workers throughout France were electing representatives to traditional courts that try to settle labor disputes peacefully, infuriated French labor unions and seemed to harden the nine-day-old strike. It also reflected the poor state of relations between the labor unions and the conservative government of Premier Jacques Chirac. Jacques de Larosiere, the former director of the International Monetary Fund who is now governor of France’s government-run central bank, said he had called on the police because the strikers were holding two bank officials against their will...

Only one restaurant in all Paris prohibits smoking. Only a handful, mostly American fast-food outlets, have nonsmoking sections. Premier Jacques Chirac rarely talks to reporters without waving a cigarette for emphasis. A stranger can always identify the high school in any Paris neighborhood by the cluster of teen-agers outside puffing awkwardly on cigarettes. The French government spends far more every year on promoting smoking than on discouraging it. There are other countries where smoking is more prevalent. Anyone who has ever listened to the raspy voice of a bartender in Madrid or choked at breakfast in a Polish coffee shop knows that. But few countries are as puzzling as France in their attitude toward smoking...

Premier Jacques Chirac of France faced bitter condemnation from Britain and growing suspicion within France on Tuesday over his deal with Iran for the release of two French hostages in Lebanon. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, commenting on the French concessions that brought the two hostages home, told the House of Commons in London that “treating with terrorists only leads to more kidnappings and more violence.” “That is the way we will not do it,” she went on. “The best defense against terrorists is to make clear that you will never give in to their demands.” Even before Thatcher spoke to Parliament, an aide to Chirac said in Paris that “we are a little astonished” at reports of the fury of Thatcher and British Foreign Minister Geoffrey Howe and at editorials in London newspapers that accused France of “betrayal” and of “a cynical compact with terror...”

James Baldwin, a renowned writer who spent a lifetime in literature trying to explore his identity as a black and as an American, died Monday night at the age of 63 in his home in St. Paul de Vence in the south of France. His death from cancer was announced Tuesday morning by Bernard Hassalle, a longtime companion and secretary. The eldest son of a Harlem preacher, Baldwin, a small, slight man, was looked on for much of two decades both as a distinguished young American novelist and as a black essayist with the extraordinary, almost uncanny power of making his black experience meaningful to a white audience. But, after the 1950s and 1960s, his reputation waned, perhaps because he had become too strident a black for white audiences, perhaps because he failed, like other American novelists of the 20th Century, to maintain the excitement and freshness of his earlier work...

The French government allowed Wahid Gordji, the Iranian official suspected of helping terrorists in Paris, to leave the besieged Iranian Embassy and return home to Iran on Sunday as part of an obvious trade for two French hostages released by their captives in Beirut two days ago. The office of Premier Jacques Chirac, in a carefully worded statement, also held out the hope that Iran would now use its influence to help arrange the release of the three other French hostages in Beirut. The departure of Gordji, holed up in the embassy for five months, also appeared to signal an end to what the French press had called “the war of the embassies” and could signal an early resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries...

Premier Jacques Chirac, welcoming two former hostages home to France from Lebanon, acknowledged Saturday that their release represents an improvement in France’s relations with Iran but denied as “a pack of lies” a report that ransom had been paid. The report had appeared only hours earlier in the influential and usually authoritative newspaper, Le Monde. In a front-page story, Le Monde said, “The payment of a ransom contributed to the liberation of the hostages.” But Chirac used strong language in denying the report at a news conference at Paris’ Orly Airport. “I deny as emphatically as I can the pack of lies that claims France paid a ransom,” Chirac said. The controversy over how France gained their release did not dampen the emotional welcome at the airport for Jean-Louis Normandin, 36, a television lighting technician, and Roger Auque, 31, a free-lance photographer...

Islamic extremists, citing assurances of an impending change in France’s policy toward the Middle East, freed two French hostages in West Beirut on Friday. Jean-Louis Normandin, 36, a television lighting technician, and Roger Auque, 31, a free-lance photographer, were released from separate cars outside the seaside Summerland Hotel, about 50 yards from waiting French Embassy officials and Syrian secret servicemen. The cars sped away quickly and the two men were rushed to the French Embassy in Christian East Beirut in bulletproof vehicles, with journalists and photographers racing behind. Normandin later told ABC News he was imprisoned with two Americans. “I was with two Americans--Joseph Cicippio and Edward Tracy--since the 12th of February,” he said. He gave no indication as to whether the kidnapers planned to release the Americans...

The region of Burgundy was once an independent state, a powerful rival of France, boasting the most elegant and fashionable court in Europe. But all that power dwindled away half a millennium ago, leaving Burgundy with little more than memories and wine. Since then, Burgundy has had its ups and downs. In his 1934 novel, “Tropic of Cancer,” Henry Miller described Dijon, the ancient capital of Burgundy, as “a hopeless, jerkwater town where mustard is turned out in carload lots, in vats and tuns and barrels and pots and cute-looking little jars.” Its past glories as the seat of a great duchy were lost on him. Today, no one can accuse Burgundy of wielding imperial power. But its wine--prized throughout the world at breathtaking prices--has made Burgundy one of the richest regions of France...

Hardly a week passes nowadays without a new political scandal in France. The air is charged with accusation. There are so many smears, in fact, that it’s hard for all of them to stick. The sound and fury is actually the unofficial opening of the campaign for next spring’s presidential election. The most serious scandal--or, as the French prefer to call it, affaire-- has echoes of the U.S. Iran-Contra furor because it involves illegal sale of arms to Iran. By all logic, that affair should have damaged the political standing of President Francois Mitterrand. But Mitterrand, a Socialist, seems to have wriggled out of the affair somewhat easily, leaving behind a trap for his conservative arch-rival, Premier Jacques Chirac, who in turn seems to have slipped the trap...

France called Thursday for an urgent meeting of the finance ministers of the seven leading industrial democracies to keep the dollar from sliding further. In a speech to the French Economic and Social Council, Finance Minister Edouard Balladur said a meeting of the so-called Group of Seven--the United States, Japan, West Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada and France--is needed “very soon” to reinforce the accords of last February that had kept the dollar stable until this week. Reagan Administration officials, however, said a meeting was unlikely until budget negotiations with Congress were completed in Washington...

Most foreigners believe that the French Revolution has a glorious image in France. After all, July 14, the anniversary of the revolutionary storming of the Bastille, is France’s national day. The revolutionary “Marseillaise” is the national anthem. And France will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the revolution in 1989. Yet, as the celebration nears, it is more and more obvious that a large minority of French has trouble embracing the revolution. Some fret over its bloody excesses and accuse generations of teachers and historians of hiding those stark and frightful realities. Some conservatives accuse leftists of exaggerating the place of the revolution in the mythology of France...

[OPINION] Hugh Capet was crowned king in 987 and the French now look on that date as the birth of France. The country is celebrating the end of its first millennium with religious ceremonies, sound-and-light shows, medieval jousting tournaments, historical symposiums, a bit of monarchist nostalgia and souvenir bric-a-brac decorated with 1,000-year-old designs. There are historical problems; nobody knows much about Hugh Capet. No scholar has ever been able to find a single medieval drawing or written description of him. His kingdom was not much, no more than bits of royal domain around Paris. He was probably more of a kinglet than a king. It is not even clear what he did as monarch aside from persuading a Roman Catholic archbishop to sanctify his son as unchallenged heir to the throne...

But Most Melanesians Boycott S. Pacific Referendum; Paris Hails Outcome. Almost everyone who voted in a special referendum in New Caledonia on Sunday rejected independence from France, but most Melanesians, the largest ethnic group on the South Pacific archipelago, boycotted the polls. Although many analysts had derided the referendum in advance as an exercise that will settle none of the racial and political problems of the territory, the French government hailed the results as a victory for democracy and for France. The results were about the best that the French government of Premier Jacques Chirac could have expected and fell short of the hopes of the main Melanesian independence party, the Socialist Kanak Front for National Liberation. Yet the results did little more than follow the general lines of the ethnic divisions of New Caledonia...