Into Premier Edgar Faure's office last week went a messenger with a personal letter. "Your colleagues and friends," it warned, "may have told you how prepared I was to bring you the weight of the enormous force that is on the march . . . [but] you have definitely chosen a path that will lead you nowhere. You are taking the responsibility for the rupture. You will suffer the consequences." The letter was from a crackpot—but a crackpot with a following.
Pierre Poujade, 34. a small-town bookseller, leads an organization called the Union for the Defense of Shopkeepers and Artisans,...