The Poujade crusade, so triumphantly threatful only four months ago, was floundering badly, and Pierre Poujade knew it. With cynical and weary skill, the veterans of the National Assembly had made fools of his shopkeeper-Deputies, and expelled seven of them for faulty credentials. His shopkeeper voters waited in vain for the tax relief Poujade promised. Last week Poujade, who refers to himself affectionately as "the Little Poujade," retreated from Paris to his old home town of Saint-Cèrè and summoned to him his leaders from all over France.
There Poujade put on the old act at which he excels. "Up to...