Francophile in the context of "Robert Bresson"

Montpelier is the capital city of the U.S. state of Vermont and the county seat of Washington County. The site of Vermont's state government, it is the least populous state capital in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,074, with a daytime population growth of about 21,000 due to the large number of jobs within city limits. The Vermont College of Fine Arts is located in the municipality. It was named after Montpellier, a city in the south of France.

Montpelier was chartered as a town by proprietors from Massachusetts and western Vermont on August 14, 1781, and the Town of Montpelier was granted municipal powers by the "Governor, Council and General Assembly of the Freemen of the State of Vermont". The first permanent settlement began in May 1787, and a town meeting was established in 1791. The city received a French name because the Franco-American alliance during the Revolutionary War had inspired widespread Francophilia. Montpelier was selected as state capital in 1805, and citizens of the town donated funds to build the first state house. The legislature chartered the City of Montpelier in 1894, and it was organized at a town meeting the next year.

Prince Saionji Kinmochi (Japanese: 西園寺 公望; 7 December 1849 – 24 November 1940) was a Japanese statesman and diplomat who twice served as Prime Minister of Japan, in 1906–1908 and 1911–1912. He was the last surviving member of the genrō, the small group of unofficial elder statesmen who dominated Japanese politics during the Meiji and Taishō periods. As a member of the Kyoto court nobility (kuge), Saionji forged a close relationship with the imperial house from a young age and participated in the Boshin War that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate. He spent nearly a decade studying in France, where he became a heartfelt Francophile deeply influenced by European liberalism.

Upon his return to Japan, Saionji held a series of high-ranking posts in the Meiji government, including diplomat and cabinet minister, often under the patronage of Itō Hirobumi. In 1903, he succeeded Itō as president of the Rikken Seiyūkai political party and entered into a political compromise with his rival, General Katsura Tarō. For the next decade, a period known as the Keien era, the two men alternated as prime minister, with Saionji leading cabinets from 1906 to 1908 and again from 1911 to 1912.

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.

Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk at the age of 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine before becoming a full-time author in 1900. Always a devotee of French culture in general and French literature in particular, he moved to Paris in 1903; there the relaxed milieu helped him overcome his intense shyness, particularly with women. He spent ten years in France, marrying a Frenchwoman in 1907. In 1912 he moved back to England. He and his wife separated in 1921, and he spent the last years of his life with a new partner, an English actress. He died in 1931 of typhoid fever, having unwisely drunk tap-water in France.