MADAME DE POMPADOUR (324 pp.) Nancy Mitford— Random House ($4.75).
When the mob marched on Versailles in the French Revolution, palace guards ran to close the massive iron gates. They tugged in vain: the gates were rusted fast into the open position from which they had not been moved for a century. Throughout that time the French public had wandered freely in and out of the great palace where their "Father" the King, had dwelt "like a man in a glass house." Louis XIV had patiently endured this goldfish life. His successor. Louis XV...
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