Vichy was snowbound. The worst blizzard in 50 years swept over the provisional capital of France, blocked the roads, tied up the railways. Snow fell on the Sévignè Pavilion, where Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, 84, awaited the coming of U. S. Ambassador William Daniel Leahy. It piled in high drifts in the nearby mountains of Auvergne; the U. S. charge d'affaires, driving to meet the new Ambassador, got only 20 miles from the capital. Still partially blacked out each night, cold, cheerless, waiting, Vichy lay paralyzed under the storm, a fitting symbol...
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