Albert S. Lindemann writes in his book Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust:
One observer commented that in the French lycees (the elite high schools): “the Jewish boys topped the list. They understood all the problems, handed in the best compositions, and collected most of the prizes at the end of the year. There was no vying with them; they were far ahead of us… Math, languages, literature, everything seemed to be their forte.”
…With the victory of the republic in 1871-75, the Catholic right was increasingly fearful that the republicans — who were, as far as many Catholics were concerned, mostly atheists, Protestants, and Jews — would try to “dechristianize” the country.
Financial scandals involving Jews were no less notorious than in Germany. One of particular importance had to do with the ill-fated efforts by the French to build a canal through Panama (1881-89). The intermediaries between the Panama Company and the French Chamber of Deputies were almost exclusively Jews, and they were exposed as bribing parliamentary delegates — over a hundred delegates and ministers of state were implicated — to cover up mismanagement of the project. Facing exposure, the Jewish intermediaries blackmailed one another, and one of them finally confessed, releasing information to the anti-Semitic press before committing suicide.
