He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. The would fall on each other, cluster in a raucous group, and pass whole evenings complaining about the barbarity of the locals. These were the few who actually noticed that locals did things differently. Others managed to travel so ‘covered and wrapped in a taciturn and incommunicative prudence, defending themselves from the contagion of an unknown atmosphere’ that they noticed nothing at all.
Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer
montaigne, nationalism, quote, sarah-bakewell, travel, xenophobia