Though a proud Frenchman, Gobineau was cosmopolitan and regarded himself as part of a cultured European elite that transcended national loyalties—a good Frenchman but even more so a "good European". Gobineau felt more affinity for fellow aristocrats of other nationalities than he did for French commoners.[147] The Czech historian Ivo Budil called him "...a cosmopolitan thinker who did not feel wholly French", and who was obsessed with ancient Greece and Persia.[148]