Word: mme
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...from the puritan, theocratic city of Geneva, Rousseau had a checkered childhood. His mother died when he was born (in 1712), his father either spoiled him or neglected him. In his youth, he successively became an apprentice lawyer, an engraver and a vagrant. He wandered into the entourage of Mme. de Warens, a sprightly young matron and Catholic convert who was easily able to induce her young lover to accept the old faith. Later, when Rousseau wanted to resume the hereditary rights of a citizen of Geneva, he had to forswear his conversion. The road to and from Rome...
...Mme. Xa and her husband fled south to Saigon in 1954, and she soon became known in the refugee-swollen quarter of Gia Dinh as a woman who got things done. She organized a neighborhood school, founded a Catholic Mothers' Association, arranged housing and relief allotments for widows...
...Mme. Xa estimates that "I could wind up with enough strength to elect myself chairman" of the Assembly. But that, she says, would be "immodest," a repetition of the mistake of Mme. Nhu, who "forgot she was a woman and tried to play like a man." Instead she will settle for deputy chairman, she says, "and a hand in writing the social-justice planks in the constitution...
...Fresh Egg. The only daughter of a wealthy rice broker in North Viet Nam and the wife of a civil servant, Mme. Xa grew up "studying like a man" in a house filled with rosewood and mother-of-pearl paneling and glass windows "as blue as the sky." Strictly chaperoned, she learned social work, painted landscapes, wrote poems to the Virgin Mary-and, at age 14, snatched away the billy club of a policeman beating a street peddler. Her family supported the Viet Minh war for independence, then was turned out of house and home by the victorious Communists...
...Constituent Assembly. Mme. Xa for the first time has a platform to match her talents. "As the only woman here," she says, "I must accept the responsibilities that should have been distributed more evenly among the millions of us in Viet Nam. Everyone so far has been quite courteous about that." And why not? As Saigon Deputy Dang Van Sung admits: "Who dares attack her? You have to be as careful as you would holding a fresh egg in your hand." A mischievous gleam in her eyes, Mme. Xa concurs: "After all, I also represent the Deputies' wives...