World: FRANCE'S MELANCHOLY MOOD

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FRANCE last week seemed all too normal. In keeping with his holiday habits, President Charles de Gaulle was at his country home in the quiet village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises in eastern France. His Premier, Maurice Couve de Murville, was on the Riviera, trying to extract some warmth from the pale Mediterranean sun. Brigitte Bardot was in the Alps, along with thousands of other French women and men who had trooped to the ski slopes in record numbers. Le tout Paris was caught up in a frenzied swirl of parties and balls that surprised even veteran socialites. "I have never seen such a social season," the Duke of Windsor told friends. "We have been going nonstop for weeks, and there is no sign of a letup."

The glitter and the gaiety were deceptive—or perhaps slightly manic. Six months after the riots that rattled the foundations of De Gaulle's Fifth Republic and five weeks after a monetary crisis that threatened to bring down the franc, France remains troubled and uneasy. Prices are rising. So are taxes, as a part of De Gaulle's new austerity program. Unrest continues to ripple across France's universities and factories, the centers of last spring's upheavals. All over the country, Frenchmen are worried that fresh economic crises or new disorders may break out. Some questioned the ability of De Gaulle and Premier Couve de Murville to cope with a new onset of troubles. The uneasiness extends into the top echelons of De Gaulle's party. Says Gaullist Secretary-General Robert Poujade: "France is sailing between anarchy and fascism."

Things are probably not quite that bad; the French have a taste for hyperbole. But the big Bordeaux daily SudOuest found that 66.2% of its readers polled were pessimistic about how France and its people would fare in 1969. Sensing the country's disquiet, De Gaulle conceded to his ministers at a recent Cabinet meeting that "the atmosphere in France is melancholic."

Effective at Mystifying. To a large degree, De Gaulle has only himself to blame. In June's national elections, French voters gave Gaullists the first absolute majority granted any French party in the National Assembly in nearly a century. However, as former Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing last week put it, "The results of the elections did not show an expression of confidence but a need for confidence." De Gaulle, now 78, has of late seemed to lose his ability to provide the forceful leadership France requires. "In the country of Louis XIV, to be governed means to have a father," wrote L'Express, adding, "France has discovered that it has only a grandfather."