(4 of 10)
Like the old soldier he is, De Gaulle has imposed a brisk routine on himself as well as on his subordinates. Arising punctually at 7:30, he breakfasts on coffee and croissants with Madame de Gaulle, then plunges into a detailed summary of the French and foreign press. At 9 he enters his office (which is decorated with busts of Caesar and Nero) for a conference with his personal staff, headed by 47-year-old Georges Pompidou, onetime executive of the Rothschild bank. The day planned, De Gaulle spends from two to three hours receiving visitors. Contrary to their original expectations, De Gaulle treats his own Cabinet ministers with old-fashioned courtesy, listens carefully and takes notes, but makes his own final decisions.
After lunch (1 to 2:30) De Gaulle returns to his office, does paperwork steadily until 8. then adjourns for dinner and a quiet evening with his wife. Determined to avoid the nervous strain that wore 25 Ibs. off one of his predecessors, he makes it a rule that he is not to be disturbed in the evening except for a grave emergency. So far there has been no emergency his staff considered that grave.
"Why Doesn't He Laugh?" For all his military briskness, De Gaulle in private life is a fond family man. Particularly devoted to his daughter Anne (who was born sickly and died in 1948), he and Madame de Gaulle have founded in her memory an institution for retarded children. At the 14-room house in Colombey, where he still spends his weekends, he loves to play the patriarch of the clan, gathering about him his naval officer son Philippe, his daughter Elizabeth (married to an army officer), his three grandchildren, and as many as possible of his 17 nieces and nephews and innumerable grandnieces and grandnephews. To the children, he is benign, loving "Uncle Charles."
When he chooses to exercise it, De Gaulle is capable of an unexpected humor. In his teens he was famed for his rendition of the "nose" speech from Cyrano de Bergerac—an act that involved masterful use of his own huge nose. And at his infrequent press conferences, he has employed his long, basset-hound countenance to immensely comic effect.
His wit is apt to be savagely ironic. When one of his aides, exasperated by a piece of correspondence, impatiently exclaimed "Death to all fools," De Gaulle soberly murmured: "Ah! What a vast program."
The once-lean soldier is now a man with considerable frontage; thick glasses give him the effect of walking unseeing. The effect has increased his air of austere remoteness. Outside his family, there is no man who can honestly call himself De Gaulle's friend, and anyone who strives to achieve uninvited intimacy with him is brusquely repulsed. On a flight to Algiers a few weeks ago, mercurial Léon Delbecque, one of the organizers of the insurrection that led to De Gaulle's return to power, plumped himself down in the seat opposite the general. Hastily, De Gaulle summoned his trusted military aide Colonel Gaston de Bonneval for a whispered conversation. When De Bonneval defensively—and audibly—remarked, "But, mon general, I didn't ask him to sit there," Delbecque ignominiously retreated.