Identifying themselves only to the parish priest at Courmayeur, Italy, the four men in mountaineers' rigs hired a guide, conquered the Alps' highest peak, 15,781-ft. Mont Blanc. The explorers: four German priests, among them Julius Cardinal Doepfner, Bishop of Berlin, at 46 the youngest cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Meanwhile, in Chicago, another Catholic prelate stood at a peak: for his longstanding friendship with the city's Jewish community, Auxiliary Archbishop Bernard J. Shell was named Man of the Year by the Greater Chicago Committee for State of Israel Bonds. Said Committee Board Chairman Harold Rosenberg: "A saintly man."

Melvin ("King of Torts") Belli, the San Francisco lawyer who has made being struck by an automobile almost as profitable as striking oil, unsettled the American Bar Association Convention at Miami Beach (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) with a "special seminar." His lecturer: "Professor O'Brien," a Buddha-faced little man in a $285 suit, who solemnly told the 100-odd lawyers present: "I probably got more courtroom experience than any of you guys." Expounding on income tax, O'Brien advised the barristers that the only way to come out even is to "borrow money from your friends." As other West Coast lawyers snickered and A.B.A. big shots fumed, the word spread: Gagster Belli's tax expert was Mobster Mickey ("I'm rehabilitated") Cohen, whose courtroom experience includes hearing a judge sentence him to five years for income-tax evasion.

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Equipped for the occasion with a Mirage III jet fighter, Aviatrix Jacqueline Auriol, 41, daughter-in-law of former French President Vincent Auriol, shot up to 37,000 ft. and gunned the ship to a new women's air speed record: 1,336 m.p.h., more than twice the speed of sound.

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To its list of "Unbest" Dressed Men, London's Man About Town magazine predictably named two iridescent outlanders --Elvis Presley and Liberace--and not too surprisingly added a member of Britain's Establishment, chronically rumpled Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. But one nominee was as shocking as plaid socks with a dinner jacket: the Duke of Windsor. The editor's appraisal: "I'm afraid he's got older, and fashion is really a young person's thing. Maybe it's the influence of the Western Hemisphere."

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Making good on a promise given in 1956, Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama posed for Hungarian Artist Elizabeth Brunner at his refuge in Mussoorie, India--the first time the god-king had permitted an artist to paint his portrait from life since his flight from Lhasa. Last week he saw the result: a likeness showing him seated before a religious scroll, holding a Buddhist prayer book.

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Beardless but bumptious as his rebel-rousing father, Fidelito Castro visited the U.S. as a tenth-birthday treat. At a Wisconsin resort he defeated a table-tennis hotshot fully five years older, lost narrowly at toy-machine-gun target practice to the Cuban military attache sent along as watchdog, threatened insurrection when sent to bed at 10:30 p.m. In Chicago he swamped a reporter at chess, phoned baseball-playing Papa Castro in Havana for instructions on throwing out the first ball at a White Sox-Red Sox game, was told "throw it straight and well." True to family tradition, Fidelito showed up too late for the ball-throwing ceremony, but collected a consolation prize: the autographs of Boston Slugger Ted Williams and Chicago's star Shortstop Luis Aparicio.

Unwilling to surrender the services of Robert Frost, whose year as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress was running out, Librarian Quincy Mumford offered the grand old poet a three-year assignment as honorary consultant in the humanities. In reply, Oracle Frost gave a definition of the humanities that promised to give him wide scope in his new job: "The humanities ... I more or less arbitrarily take to mean practically everything human that has been brought to book and can be treated in poetry--philosophy, politics, religion, history and science. Everything, everything . . ."

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Determined to see Peking despite the State Department's refusal to give him a passport valid for travel in Red China, Oregon's showboating Democratic ' Congressman Charles O. Porter took his case to the U.S. District Court in Washington, named Secretary of State Christian Herter as defendant. Oregon's Porter (also known as "the Congressman from Latin America" for his earnest advocacy of Fidel Castro and his enmity for the Dominican Republic's Dictator Trujillo) favors diplomatic recognition of Red China, says he wants to lead a caravan of 40 to 60 reporters to Canton to "help blur the enemy stereotype." So far he has no assurance that the Red Chinese would receive even him.

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Duffy Dougherty, Michigan State's head football philosopher (and coach), admitted that he expects great things from one of his freshmen meat-eaters: 214-lb. James P. Hoffa, all-city, all-state guard from Detroit's Cooley High School, and son of the man who perfected labor's T (for torpedo) formation, Teamster Boss James R. Hoffa.

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