Word: frans
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...Born François-Marie Arouet on Nov. 22, 1694-his father quite possibly not his mother's husband-Voltaire soon decided* that a man's main choice in life was to play the hammer or the anvil. Zozo, as he was nicknamed, had no doubts about which role he intended to take. Blessed with a middle-class background, a sound Jesuit education, a phenomenal memory and a wit to match his impudence, Voltaire hammered on every anvil in sight with an exuberance no enlightened common sense could quite explain...
...killed in a shotgun accident that may have been a suicide. A group of characters from his past have been summoned for the reading of the will. They make up a nicely varied assortment: two ex-wives-one of them an old dreadnought of an actress superbly played by Françoise Rosay-three mistresses and three men, including a dyspeptic theater critic, jealous of Antoine's sexual and professional success...
...According to Herbert Itkin, an FBI informant, Voloshen worked both for and against the Haitian government of François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier. In 1963, Voloshen offered to persuade Congressmen to speak against continuance of U.S. aid to Haiti, for a fee of $5,000 per legislator. A year later, for a retainer from the Haitian government, Voloshen said he would invoke his influence to speed $4,500,000 in U.S. funds to build a Haitian airport. Itkin reported the scheme to U.S. officials, and the funds were immediately frozen, depriving Voloshen...
...WITCHES by Françoise Mallet-Joris. 391 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux...
...Françoise Mallet-Joris's observation is unusually wary and intense, perhaps because her creatures move in a society held rigid by theology where diabolism is as real as rock-a milieu not merely strange but very nearly incomprehensible to a mind formed in the 20th century. A modern student can read the documents-the witch-burners were articulate enough-but statistics and dry records are unlikely to convey to him any idea of the atmosphere that hangs for days, according to the author, in a town square after a witch has been burned. Is the smell...