Word: laval
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Last week Pierre Laval came to judgment. With him came none of the dreadful pity, the sense of terrible duty that had been in every Frenchman's heart during the trial, death sentence and commutation to life imprisonment, of old Marshal Henri Pétain. The elimination of Pierre Laval, a necessary chore, might have been a satisfying vengeance. He made it a shameful farce...
...Bawled Laval at the start: "I am a patriot and I will prove it!" Up jumped the Judge, the prosecutor, all 24 jurors to shout him down. Having robbed the Court of its dignity, Laval smirked. His lawyers walked out, protesting that they had had no time to prepare. Laval pleaded humbly for a delay. It was refused; he slammed his briefcase down on a table...
...Well, then, condemn me now!" he yelled. "At least the situation will be clear then!" The enraged Mongibeaux bellowed at the guards. Pierre Laval, thrice Premier of France, was hauled away to his cell...
France's everpresent, ever-haunting awareness of national guilt would not down: the Court had to agree that Laval would "not be reproached" for his prewar career, for complicity in the 1940 armistice, for the law by which the National Assembly armed Pétain and Laval with power and set up the Vichy regime...
Said Madame Laval: she had not even lived at Vichy, but at Chateldon, some 13 miles away. She was doing "agricultural work." Her husband believed his policies were best for France, and she believed her husband...