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Inside a Magnum. Guy was raised in a mansion that once was Talleyrand's and later became European headquarters for the Marshall Plan. Today, in an 18th century town house that once belonged to a niece of Napoleon, he lives with his auburn-haired second wife Marie Helene, 32. (When he left his first wife for Catholic Marie Hélène seven years ago, Guy became the first head of a Rothschild house ever to marry a Christian, had to resign the presidency of France's Jewish Community in the ensuing scandale.) The walls of their house are lined with paintings by Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Ingres and Boucher, some displayed in a strawberry-red salon that gives a visitor the impression of being inside a magnum of Chateau Lafite.
On weekends Guy and Marie Hélène drive in the Mercedes or the Bentley to their 9,000-acre estate at Ferrières, 19 miles east of Paris, where high, sculptured ceilings brood over a splendor of blue marble columns, blackamoor statuary, yellow silk furniture, and sepia photographs of ancestors. Every other weekend there is a golf match or a shoot in woods that have recently been restocked with pheasant. The parties at Ferrières, which once awed Kaiser Wilhelm, now hum to brittle conversation and shine with the high fashion of an international society that mixes people of achievement with outsiders of the jet set. Guests have included French Premier Georges Pompidou (who was director general of de Rothschild Frères under his good friend Guy until 1962), former Premier Michel Debré, Prince Sadruddin Khan, Artur Rubinstein, the Charles Wrightsmans of Palm Beach and Porfirio Rubirosa.
Friendly Rivals. On the great marshy peninsula of Médoc, the celebrated vines that grow over 200 chalky acres of Château Lafite-Rothschild produce a grand cru that is the pride of Guy, Elie, Alain and Edmond. Next door, at his Château Mouton Rothschild, Philippe wages a battle for oenological equality with his fond cousins and competitors, trying to persuade the French government's wine agency to revise its official 1855 wine classification, which listed Mouton slightly below Lafite. Philippe has commissioned, among others, Cocteau, Braque, Dali and Lippold to design labels for his Mouton Rothschild.
Another after-hours Rothschild passion is raising and racing horses. Britain's Evelyn and France's Edmond both breed horses on their estates. So famous are Guy's stables at Chantilly and his Deauville stud farms that during the war the Nazis delighted in crossing seized Rothschild mares with German stallions. Now Guy directs all the breeding: "I enjoy making up my mind for the matings, and then seeing the babies." His most successful match produced Exbury, winner of all five races he was entered in this year, including the world's richest cup, the Prix de 1'Arc ($197,000). Figuring that Exbury could not top that record, Guy retired him, and the horse henceforth will earn $240,000 a year at stud—accommodating up to 40 mares a year at $6,000 per service.