(2 of 2)
In Rio, the French embassy was smeared with ink and tar. and someone painted "Lobsters yes, De Gaulle no" on a downtown wall. Brazilian diplomats boycotted a dinner aboard the liner France when it docked at Rio, sales of French wines slumped, and Carnival revelers dressed as lobsters danced a new lobster samba. Inevitably, in newspaper cartoons o grande Carlos was depicted as a long-nosed lobster.
As their warships maneuvered miles apart. France and Brazil at week's end seemed in no danger of trading shots. But Frenchmen, who each year eat 2,500 tons of lobster, nearly a third of it imported from such lobstering grounds as Brazil's, were forced to ponder an unsettling choice of loyalties—palate or patrie—and ask themselves, what price grandeur?
* According to crustacean-wise Brazilian naturalists, some lobsters swim, some don't.