"At the inquisition that preceded her immolation, Joan of Arc was asked what satanic hex she had invoked to move the reluctant French into battle. She is supposed to have replied, simply, 'What I said was "Ride these English down" -- and I did it myself!'

"Le Pen, as a twentieth-century man, spins his war whoops with a little more irony. 'We like foreigners,' he told a rally of his supporters a few years ago. Then, after a pause, he added, 'In their countries.'"

[In 2003, Le Pen famously called the Holocaust "a detail of the history of the Second World War."]