Lecture at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institut de France, Paris, 13 June 2014.  This was part of the concluding session of the conference, "Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat et ses successeurs: Deux cents ans de sinologie française en France et en Chine," organized at the Collège de France on the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of the creation of the first academic chair in Chinese studies in Europe.