Word: taining
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...tumbril but in a Black Maria, Henri Philippe Pétain, 89, hero of Verdun, Marshal of France and chief of the late Vichy Government, rode to one of history's great trials-his own, for high treason. With him rode the France of 1940 to be judged by the France...
...Marshal's countrymen, who five years ago looked to him as a fallen nation's hope, caught a glimpse of him as he passed on the way from Montrouge Prison to the Palais de Justice. Stiff with age and dignity, Pétain sat far in the back of the van. His wife, two doctors, two nurses and three lawyers trailed him in a five-car convoy. In the Palais courtyard the half-deaf old man was helped down by two gendarmes. "Ah," he quavered, "so we are here...
Before him ranged the red-robed High Court of Justice, a three-man tribunal headed by stern Pierre Mongibeaux, 65, (in 1941 he had sworn loyalty to Pétain's Vichy Government). The public prosecutor was André Mornet, 75 (in World War I he sent Spy Mata Hari to the firing squad). The 24-man jury had been chosen half from the Resistance movement, half from non-collaborationist ex-parliamentarians. Behind the prisoner sat his counsel, his doctors and nurses, the witnesses (there would be about 50), the tightly packed reporters and spectators...
...Saved France." The prosecution read the Bill of Accusation: As Vichy Chief of State, Pétain had put the capstone on "a long-prepared plot against the Republican regime. ..." Then the judges (following French legal fashions), turned to question the defendant. The Marshal cut them short...
Cried dapper ex-Premier Paul Reynaud, 66, who had been Pétain's predecessor: "I, like the rest of France, was fooled by the Marshal. ... He tried to destroy what remained of France's soul...