Word: xiv
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LOUISE-FRANÇOISE DE BOURBON, bastard daughter of Louis XIV, built the Palais-Bourbon beside her lover's Hôtel de Lassay in order to be near him; her gardens were a favorite place to stroll. Today the Palais-Bourbon is the home of France's National Assembly, and the gardens in recent years have been a morning rendezvous for two unlikely figures. One was a watchful policeman cradling an automatic rifle. The other was Assembly President Jacques Pierre Michel Chaban-Delmas, 54, togged in a track suit. Under the eyes of his security guard, Chaban...
...taxation," observed Jean Baptiste Colbert, France's controller general of finance under Louis XIV, "consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing." Three centuries after Colbert's cynical appraisal, the contemporary American taxpayer feels thoroughly plucked-and he is hissing louder than ever. Now the ides of April are approaching-the deadline for filing is the 15th of this month-and the resentment of taxpayers points increasingly toward a ballot-box revolt. In a spontaneous outpouring of popular indignation, citizens by the thousands have deluged Washington...
Nixon's conversations with De Gaulle, at the Elysée Palace and at Louis XIV's Grand Trianon in Versailles, went as smoothly as either nation could expect. One indication that the venerable general was in a benign mood came during the glittering dinner party at the Elysée. Impressed that De Gaulle always speaks without notes, Nixon Speechwriter Bill Safire asked the French President how he did it. "I write it out in longhand and then memorize it," De Gaulle replied. "I tear the page out and throw it away...
...weeks the walls of Paris and the sides of its ancient buses had been plastered with huge red posters bearing the reassuring message: "Saint-Gobain . . . a trustworthy trademark." Day after day, France's most aristocratic company, which was set up in 1665 by Louis XIV to make the glass for Versailles, blared its virtues in unheard-of fashion for French corporations-double-truck newspaper ads, regular radio and television appearances. Since Christmas, France has experienced what in the business world is something like the student-worker upheaval of last May and June. Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, Europe...
...Giscard d'Estaing last week put it, "The results of the elections did not show an expression of confidence but a need for confidence." De Gaulle, now 78, has of late seemed to lose his ability to provide the forceful leadership France requires. "In the country of Louis XIV, to be governed means to have a father," wrote L'Express, adding, "France has discovered that it has only a grandfather...