Word: mending
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Hope & Cold Flame. To broach the matter, Mendès invited Adenauer out to a small 17th century château near Versailles which French kings had maintained for favorite mistresses. In a small chamber warmed by a fire on the hearth, the two faced each other across a narrow table: Mendès, hooded, saturnine, a man like a cold, dark flame that cuts through difficulties or friendships with impartial efficiency; old Konrad Adenauer, German man of good will, behind whose craggy face still loomed the memory of his nation's blood-ridden record...
...take all the dossiers out of the drawer," said Mendès. He began that afternoon with hope. He spoke of a Moselle canal to link Lorraine's economy with the Ruhr, of a Rhone canal to open the Mediterranean to Germany, of joint arms plants, of joint German-French companies to develop France's North African territories. The Saar, Mendès indicated, could be just a small item in a new, sweeping Franco-German era of partnership...
...Premiers took a break to stroll around the pond in the autumn dusk. Then Mendès broached the question on which the week's success (and German sovereignty) depended. The French Assembly would not tolerate any economic isolation of the Saar from France, Mendès said bluntly, or agree to its political union with Germany. It must remain "European-ized," even if there was no longer any European community to which to attach it. Adenauer was reluctant to renounce all claim to the Saar as German territory. Mendès conceded that any agreement reached would...
Adenauer was taken aback. Mendès shrugged. It had to be, he insisted. Adenauer objected that his coalition leaders would never agree in effect to muzzle German parties and newspapers. Ask them, suggested Mendès. Adenauer said he would see them when he got back to Bonn, and let Mendès know. That would not do, said Mendès; he had to know this week. Adenauer agreed to summon his coalition leaders to Paris...
Before breaking up for dinner, Mendès asked when Adenauer was returning to Bonn. Probably Saturday night, said Adenauer. "Oh, hell," said Mendès. "That means we've got to get this agreement on the Saar by Saturday then." Mendès likes deadlines, and Adenauer understood: if he did not agree to a Saar solution by Saturday, Mendès would not sign Germany into sovereignty. Der Alte drove back to Paris tired and discouraged. "Many things lie heavily on my heart," he told his aides...