Word: malletted
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...relative who emigrated to America and became a millionaire. A few are right. The rest provide employment for lawyers, archivists and private detectives-especially in France, where the search for several legacies has gone on for generations. None of them is more fabulous than that of Jean-Pierre Mallet, who, so the story goes, died childless in 1818 in Winooski, Vt., leaving behind properties that stretched from the shores of Lake Champlain all the way to Chicago...
...sure, no Vermont probate court records any evidence of Mallet's millions-or indeed of his ever having lived in Vermont.* The U.S. Treasury also claims that it knows nothing of this vast estate, now worth $512 million, which it is supposed to be holding in trust for the rightful heirs. Such professions of ignorance do not deceive Princess Hélène Favraud Ayoubi, 45, widow of a self-styled Iraqi emir and president of the World Union of Mallet Heirs, which is dedicated to recovering the legacy. Nor was she overly fazed last week when...
Wild as the story may seem, it has survived the earnest attempts of a century of debunking historians, for the Princess Ayoubi is hardly the first to tell it. It has been told and retold in Limousin, where Mallet is as common a surname as is Johnson in Minnesota, since the middle of the 19th century. U.S. Consul Walter Griffin did in fact try to locate the inheritance, called it quits in 1894-and for his pains earned the disapproval of the French National Assembly, which demanded a more thorough investigation. Government opinion, however, seems to have quietly come round...
...inheritance? "I don't have any official documents," she explained. "That's why I founded the union-to find the documents." The weary judge concluded that the next step in the case would be a psychiatric examination. But this was not likely to discourage all the other Mallets. One scholar has concluded that the real Jean-Pierre Mallet was a French farmer who died not far from his birthplace in 1815, leaving an estate of $290-but Princess Ayoubi's reaction was probably typical. "Eh bien," she shrugged, "if it wasn't that Jean-Pierre Mallet...
...screamed. "Get up, you yellow bum!" Under Maine rules, Timekeeper Francis McDonough could have delayed the count for the knockdown until Clay went to a neutral corner. But he didn't. He ticked off the seconds by pounding on the ring mat with a wooden mallet. When McDonough reached twelve, he quit. Liston was still on the floor, and Clay was still in the middle of the ring. Unable to pull Cassius away, Referee Jersey Joe Walcott, who seemed even more confused than the spectators, gave up and walked away. He never got Clay to a neutral corner...