Word: valets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...father. He was difficult, even as a child. When told to kiss the plump cheek of a grown-up female relative, he bit it. His mother's death, when he was 5, plunged him into despair and atheism. His only childhood friend was his grandfather's valet, who was killed by falling from a mulberry tree. At school Henri won a prize at mathematics, and at 16 was allowed to go to Paris, ostensibly to enter L'Ecole Polytechnique, really "with the firm intention of becoming a seducer of women." He did neither; in 1800 his cousin...
...diplomat of the old, punctilious school is M. Jean Herbette, Ambassador of the French Republic to the Soviet Union, dean of the Moscow diplomatic corps, veteran of a thousand manicures, husband of a onetime danseuse of the Paris opera. One morning, fortnight ago, his valet patted him into diplomatic uniform, adjusted the cross of the Legion of Honor on his chest, sprayed just the merest squeeze of perfume. His secretary handed him a crisp official envelope blazoned with the eagles of Rumania. His military chauffeur, his gold-frogged footman, his glistening, beak-nosed Renault limousine completed the splendiferous translation...
...spite of his manner is Pietro Gasparri. Swarthy, stout of frame, broad of shoulder, his head is Ciceronian. His apartment in the Vatican, directly beneath the Pope's and connected with it by a private elevator, is of two rooms. His retinue includes a butler, a cook, a valet, a green parrot. In the little cemetery at Ussita, his home village, where the peasants call him "Don Pietro," his tomb is ready, inscription...
Even better than the Tiger, the Chief of Police of Paris knows the value of a perfect valet. Monsieur Jean Chiappe, like New York's Grover Aloysius Whalen, is sartorially pluperfect. He appears at inquests in a cutaway, dashes to the scene of midnight murders in a white tie. It was a beau geste when Chief Chiappe gave Clémenceau Valet Albert employment last week, not as a valet but as a special inspector of police. People who remember that the "Tiger" generally slept in his clothes, hardly ever allowed them to be pressed, and once wore...
...What will become of Albert and François?" Frenchmen asked each other last week with sympathetic little shrugs, hoped the answer of Fate would not be too hard. The two old servants were Georges Clémenceau's valet and chauffeur. His last act was to draw their hands to his lips and kiss them, just before he said: "I want no women and I want no tears! Let me die before men" (TIME...