Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution (league) had a number of variations, particularly the "aune" (which was used to measure cloth The "loi du 19 frimaire an VIII" (Law of 10 December 1799) states that one decimal metre is exactly 443.296 French lines, or "3 pieds 11.296 lignes de la "Toise du Pérou"". Thus the French royal foot is exactly 9000/27,706 metres (about 0.3248 m). In Quebec, the surveys in French units were converted using the relationship 1 "pied" (of the French variety, the same word being used for English feet as well) = 12.789 English inches. This makes the Quebec "pied" very slightly smaller (about
Pied-Noir I had a religion, and I thought I had a country.” Messud noted that the novelist Albert Camus, himself a "pied-noir", had often written of his love for the sea-shores and mountains of Algeria, declaring Algeria was a place that was a part of his soul, feelings that she noted that mirrored those of other "pied-noirs" for whom Algeria was the only home they had ever known. The "Pied-Noir" community has adopted, as both an unofficial anthem and as a symbol of its identity, Captain Félix Boyer's 1943 version of "Le Chant des Africains" (lit. "The Song of the Africans").