The bustling town of Poissy, 17 miles northwest of Paris, needed a high school and thought it had the perfect site. The town council expropriated 18 acres of farm land containing several orchards, a few small market-garden plots, and smack in the middle, a decrepit, uninhabited villa owned by the widow and son of a Paris insurance man named Pierre Savoye. Poissy's mayor proposed to indemnify the family and then tear the villa down. Last week M. le Maire wished he could forget the whole thing. The idea brought a hornet's nest of protests down on his head.
Though it has come...
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