Word: franc
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...Camille Chautemps, is certainly the most notorious person ever permitted to found a French pawnshop. Slightly confused by his many aliases and escapes, French police think he is the Chevalier d'Industrie (confidence man) who so recently as 1926 cashed a forged check for more than a million francs. They think he is the "Handsome Alexandre" who twice escaped from agents of the Sûreté Générale who were taking him by train to Paris. In the first instance the agents went to sleep, drugged. In the second their prisoner slipped off his handcuffs...
...happened last week, to the joy and profit of a great many ladies and gentlemen. There are ladies who would not scramble to pick up chips worth 10,000 francs ($621) each. There are gentlemen who would not fight with each other over 10,000-franc chips. But no such gentlefolk seemed to be in Monte's Casino last week when the roulette-fagged croupier went crazy. No. 13 had just come up on the wheel he was spinning. Jumping up wild-eyed from his doughnut, he seized handfuls of 10,000 franc chips, flung them wildly all over...
...well till one day van Gogh suggested in all seriousness that they paint pictures together, each contributing the thing he was best at. Gauguin laughed all the way to the town brothel. There one of the girls told van Gogh that if he could not give her a five-franc piece for a Christmas present he might at least make her a gift of one of his big lop-ears. Next day, with no apparent provocation, van Gogh hurled an absinthe glass at Gauguin. The day following, he left a parcel at the brothel. It was his right ear, which...
...Government bureaus to collect their prize money, many winners loitered for a time with the crowd pretending to wait for news, finally eased in through the door. When they emerged, they covered their faces with their hands to foil photographers, raced panic-stricken for cover. When 16 Frenchmen became franc millionaires (1,000,000 francs = $64,600), most of them stayed anonymous...
...small coal-&-wood merchant of Avignon. At dawn he was irritably reaching for his breakfast coffee in an Avignon bistro when the barman pushed him a copy of the morning paper. Ribiere's eye fell on the news that his ticket had won the 5,000,000 franc ($323,000) Grand Prize. He whirled, leaped into the air, vanished out the door, homeward bound to check his ticket number. It checked. He ran back through Avignon's narrow streets to the building where his mother is a janitress. Yipping, prancing and slapping himself, he yelled. "Mama, wake...