PARIS — Balzac tried and failed. Zola knocked on the door dozens of times and was always refused. Verlaine got no votes. Hugo got in, barely, only after multiple tries.

The august Académie française — the elite club of 40 “immortals,” as the members are known, that serves as the official guardian of the French language — does not admit just anybody. So exclusive is it that most of France’s greatest writers never made it.

But the sacred job of protecting France from “brainless Globish” and the “deadly snobbery of Anglo-American,” as a member spat out in a speech last month, has rarely been more difficult to attain.

Four vacancies — lifelong tenures — have opened since December 2016. Three times the academy members have voted, most recently in late January, and three times they have failed to achieve a majority.