Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [136]
Most casinos did not open until the spring of 1946, and then only after mayors, members of the National Assembly or prefects had written to the Minister of the Interior begging for his intervention to save towns whose only natural resource was tourism. The time was ripe, for the devaluation of the franc in December 1945 had acted as a powerful incentive for foreigners to come and spend money in France. Couture had never been so reasonable, and what they saved on clothes they would spend at the tables. The country’s desperate need for foreign exchange was the best argument against Communist attacks claiming that ministers were in the pockets of casino owners.
The most enthusiastic, and the most silent, supporters of the revival of gambling were the big black-marketeers. Casinos offered the easiest way to launder large amounts of money. Before French casinos reopened, these men and women would travel to Monte Carlo with a suitcase full of grubby notes, and return with a pristine cheque from the Société des Bains de Mer and an unbreakable story that their fortune came from a lucky streak at the tables.
In the years following the Liberation, racing was more controversial than gambling, since it attracted the rich French in a very public display of money and fashion while casinos catered more to foreigners. The racing correspondent of one newspaper denounced as scandalous the fact that racegoers – or turfistes, as they were called in the popular press – were running up restaurant bills of 10,000 to 12,000 francs for lunch. He also declared that ‘the paddock is overrun by the cream of the collaboration’. Guy de Rothschild recorded in his memoirs that ‘the owner of an important racing stable had his face publicly slapped at Longchamp by a man who was, moreover, not entirely irreproachable himself. A few years after the war, the same owner had the luck to win the Arc de Triomphe two years running; fearing the hostile reaction of the crowd, he didn’t even dare to leave his box.’
The first presidential inauguration of the Fourth Republic took place on 16 January 1947. Nobody wanted to be president more than Vincent Auriol, the Socialist from the south-west who joked about his Languedoc accent. Auriol had been so nervous about the outcome of the election by the Assembly that he had hardly stopped touching wood.
It was freezing on the day of the inauguration, but the sun was out. That night the Élysée Palace was illuminated, and the floodlit tricolour above it was flown for the first time in seven years. On 11 February, President Auriol gave the first large reception held since the war. The palace was brightly lit, some thought too brightly; the women wore very formal dresses, but the men were in dinner jackets rather than tail coats. The most crowded room was the dining room.
Auriol was a bon vivant Socialist who took such pleasure from the trappings and the traditions associated with the office of president that the Communist minister François Billoux dubbed him ‘l’intoxiqué de l’Élysée’. He had a strong sense of the dignity of his new position. At the first meeting of the Council of Ministers, Jules Moch, an old companion-in-arms from the Socialist Party, turned to him and addressed him by the familiar tu.
‘Allow me,’ replied the President of the Republic, drawing himself up in his chair, ‘to make the observation to Monsieur le Ministre des Travaux Publics that…’
The new President was also passionately fond of shooting and trout fishing, and whenever ambassadors arrived to present their credentials the talk soon turned in that direction. He was determined to improve the presidential shoot at Rambouillet,