Word: chateauful
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Every morning last week the President left his French-style chateau, The Elms, at 8 o'clock, usually did not return until nearly midnight. Saturday morning he even took a brisk, 10-min-ute walk through his northwest Washington neighborhood before setting out for work, had a caravan of curious reporters and wary Secret Service men quickstepping with...
...expert, Couelle dabbled in architecture as a young man. In 1925 he designed a "13th century" chateau at Castellaras on the slopes of the Maritime Alps above Cannes for a New York stockbroker who wanted a proper setting for his medieval art collection. Couelle quit the profession and founded his own "Center of Research in Natural Structure." In 17 years he took out more than 100 patents for new structural materials-but built nothing. Then five years ago, he took Paris Banker Pierre Beckhardt for a drive to show him "a mistake I made when I was young"-the stockbroker...
Abode of Instinct. Enraptured by Couelle's collection of housing icono-clasms, Beckhardt decided it might be profitable for his bank to invest in a Couelle-designed development, and he arranged to purchase the chateau and 125 acres around it. Couelle's first project was to create Old Castellaras, which he did by building 91 houses (from $30,000 to $100,000) around the chateau. Most of them looked like provincial farmhouses from the outside, were startling only in that there were a few tricky Couelle nuances inside (odd-shaped staircases, sculptured fireplaces). They sold quickly...
...Rehearsal is a play-within-a-play. The time is now, although the count and keeper of an 18th century chateau is rehearsing his costumed entourage in an 18th century comedy by Marivaux. The bulk of his cast is a very aristocratic, very French menage a quatre: the count (Keith Mitchell) and his mistress, the countess (Coral Browne) and her lover. Another actor is the count's longtime friend (Alan Badel), a professional womanizer sardonically named Hero. According to the code of this set, the only liaison dangereuse is with a person outside one's own class...
...suggesting that Hero seduce the governess. The seduction scene is the brilliant apex of the play, and as Alan Badel masterfully shades his performance from dueling banter to abashed tenderness, his acting moves beyond skill into the permanently and poignantly memorable. The next morning the governess flees the chateau, and the others seem ready to go on playacting at life as if it were still another comedy by Marivaux. All except Hero. He has seen himself for what he is and the world for what it is, and he taunts the countess' lover into challenging him to a duel...