Word: parmesan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...most sensational poverty-to-power careers. "Had Alberoni been given two worlds like ours to destroy," grumbled Frederick the Great, an authori ty, "he would have asked for a third." Giulio Alberoni was born (1664) in the Grand Duchy of Parma - until then, chiefly famed as the home of Parmesan cheese...
...When the War of the Spanish Succession (England, Austria, Holland and Prussia v. France and Spain) broke out, Parma's Duke sided with the French. Abbe Alberoni, 33, was among those sent to pay little Parma's respects to French Marshal Vendome. The haughty Marshal received the Parmesan statesmen by rising from his privy seat and turning his bare butt to them. Cried Abbe Alberoni: "Checulo d'angelo!" ("What an angelic bottom!") Marshal Vendome was enchanted, soon signed Alberoni on as his private secretary. The shrewd secretary bought Vendome's vain generals new wigs, found...
...could not do without a woman in his bed, but who would allow into it no woman that was not his wife." This royal singularity Alberoni met with prelatical resourcefulness by promoting the charms of Princess Elisabeth Farnese of Parma as "a good Lombard girl . . . stuffed with butter and Parmesan cheese." Philip mar ried...
...President Lebrun that there was nothing to be hoped for from the hungry Italians. If anyone could wring concessions from Rome, it should have been the realistic co-author of the ill-fated Hoare-Laval Ethiopian Deal; but he might as well have tried to wring wine from a Parmesan cheese...