Word: richelieu
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...circulation, the old 100 New Franc bill, showing Napoleon, was replaced by a new 100-franc bill showing the bewigged head of the 17th century poet-playwright Pierre Corneille. The Banque de France has lately displayed a preference for literary men over generals and politicians-Voltaire last year replaced Richelieu on the 10-franc note, and Racine replaced Henri IV on the 50. But Frenchmen are now complaining that the new 100-franc Corneille note is confusingly similar to the 500 note, which shows Molière. Nonsense, replied a harassed bank spokesman, Molière's curls...
Pulpit Bar. What the shrewd King and his crafty sage Cardinal Richelieu lived with has for years been tucked away in dark corners of French provincial manor houses. Tastemongers used to consider Louis XIII too ponderous by comparison to the more delicate, later Louisiana that most people are afraid to plump down on. But no longer, for a revival of Louis XIII antiques has tripled their prices in the past five years; they are now the freshest item on the French market. Scarce, perhaps, but a perfect Treize chair runs to $2,000, compared with the $5,500 that...
Full Stocking. France's monumental diplomatist of the 19th century was Talleyrand, who, said Mirabeau, would sell his soul for money, "and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold." Where Richelieu spoke for a powerful and united France, Talleyrand's 19th century role was most often like De Gaulle's: to make the world pay heed to a beaten, broken France. Superbly confident, cool under the worst conditions, Talleyrand once sat calmly through an hour-long tirade by Napoleon Bonaparte and heard himself called everything from a liar and a traitor...
...Class. Couve de Murville is in the tradition of his famous predecessors. He shares with Richelieu a mastery of detail and an acute sense of the true political situation, and possesses much of the glacial calm and stiff self-control of Talleyrand. So far, he has been the nearly flawless tactician of De Gaulle's grand strategy with its goals of 1) primacy in Europe, 2) increasing independence from the U.S., and 3) emergence as leader of the world's third force...
...with elegance and precision is highly prized at the Quai. Novelist Remain Gary and Playwright Jean Giraudoux were foreign service officers; Poet St. John Perse (actually Alexis Leger) rose to the No. 2 post at the Quai; and Stendhal wrote The Charterhouse of Parma while in the diplomatic corps. Richelieu once effortlessly composed a 500-line insert for Corneille's verse drama, Le Cid, to replace a passage of the author's that Richelieu thought in bad taste...