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Subhuman Treatment. Concierges have had a few defenders. Frédéric-Dupont, a former independent Deputy for Paris, argued so eloquently for a bill freeing concierges from the cordon that when he rose to speak other Deputies would shout the traditional cry: "Cordon, s'il vous plaít!" His bill was passed in 1957, and most doors are now opened by an electrical release in the tenant's own apartment...
...Laffon, head of the biggest of four concierge unions, says, "People do it just to get housing. It used to be a sort of profession. Now you have young couples who can't find an apartment, or elderly widows with no income and nowhere to go." Frédéric-Dupont claims that concierges are not so much surly as suffering, from loneliness, illness, malnutrition and exhaustion. He adds: "They are continually interrupted at whatever they're doing by people who burst into their loges without knocking, who are demanding and impolite and who sometimes treat them...
...mispronounce. "Whin Thaydore Rosenfelt kisses a baby," Mr. Dooley told his pal Hinissy, "thousands iv mothers in all corners of th' land hear th' report an' th' baby knows its been kissed an' bears th' hon'rable scar through life. Twinty years fr'm now th' counthry will be full iv young fellows lookin' as though they'd grajated fr'm a German college...
...laid down France's first railways (on which he made a great profit by artificially running up prices of the shares). The British Rothschilds ignored the country's industrial boom, but propped the young government of the U.S. with loans and, in combination with de Rothschild Frères, made loans to Brazil. "Money is the God of our times, and Rothschild is his prophet," sang Heinrich Heine, who marveled at seeing a French borrower tip his hat to the chamber pot of Baron Jakob...
...Ferrières, which once awed Kaiser Wilhelm, now hum to brittle conversation and shine with the high fashion of an international society that mixes people of achievement with outsiders of the jet set. Guests have included French Premier Georges Pompidou (who was director general of de Rothschild Frères under his good friend Guy until 1962), former Premier Michel Debré, Prince Sadruddin Khan, Artur Rubinstein, the Charles Wrightsmans of Palm Beach and Porfirio Rubirosa...