Desire Under the Helm

After posting three bulletins on the gates of Paris' Cochin Hospital, the doctors decided that the patient was recovering so well from his prostate operation that no further progress reports were needed. Charles de Gaulle's surgeon called him "un homme formidable!"

De Gaulle's first official visitor was Premier Georges Pompidou, who spent 20 minutes going over the agenda for the weekly Cabinet meeting at which he presided in the President's absence--and instituted a daring change: he allowed the ministers to smoke.

The Premier's progress as De Gaulle's deputy was intently regarded by French politicians. It is widely believed that if De Gaulle should decide not to run for re-election next year, he will designate Pompidou as his successor. Even if De Gaulle does run, as still seems likely, "Pompey," as Americans in Paris call him, is becoming more important in the De Gaulle administration, chiefly as a link between the austere, lofty leader and the French businessmen and small bourgeoisie.

Multiple Careers. Of all the men in the administration, Pompidou is the closest to De Gaulle, personally as well as politically. He is a rarity among French Premiers in that he was snatched from almost total political obscurity to become at least the nominal head of a government. Pompidou has never been elected to anything and had not even held a ministerial portfolio until De Gaulle named him Premier in 1962 to replace Michel Debre. But Pompidou, 52, is enormously able in his own right, and a man who has made a success of several careers.

He started as a professor of literature, moved into the upper reaches of the civil service, then joined the Rothschild bank and quickly rose to general manager, the top post under the Rothschilds themselves. During De Gaulle's years out of power, he impressed le grand Charles with his gifts as a writer, thinker and human being, went to work for him as an adviser. He is worldly, affable, and possesses a neat, aphoristic wit. Sample: "There are two sorts of people: those who try to make their own fortune and those who make the fortunes of others." But in loyally serving De Gaulle's political fortune, Pompidou is no mirror-image of his idol; he is both more artistically inclined and more frivolous.

Pompidou is a passionate collector of modern paintings and disconcerts his colleagues by hanging Soulages and De Staels on the tapestried walls of his stuffy official residence. He has edited a first-rate anthology of French poetry, containing long excerpts from his favorites, Apollinaire and Baudelaire. With his blonde wife Claude, he seems most at home with such literary and show business types as Andre Malraux, Franc,oise Sagan, Bernard Buffet, Jeanne Moreau and, more recently, that long-legged U.S. newcomer, Jane Fonda. Summers, the Pompidous spend at St. Tropez with the bikini set.

Occasional Disagreement. Despite his complete loyalty to De Gaulle, he has been known to disagree and to argue, at least once threatened his resignation when the boss wanted to execute General Edmond Jouhaud, a respected old soldier implicated in the S.A.O. conspiracy over Algeria. Lately, Pompidou has made strong efforts to show that he is more than De Gaulle's tool, and did so again in the Assembly last week. Staking out his claim to a role as policymaker alongside De Gaulle, he reminded critics that all presidential acts require his signature too, and implied that he does not necessarily give it without making his opinions felt.

If this was only a modest claim to independence, it helped Pompidou's emerging political image. So does his knack for working out compromises between industry and the workers, who are besieging the inflation-ridden De Gaulle regime with demands for wage increases. In his increasingly frequent TV appearances, he is somewhat pedestrian, but also shows a certain folksy appeal. Watching him on the screen, De Gaulle himself once said appreciatively: "Good. Louis XVIII in modern dress." He was referring to the first Bourbon king restored to the throne after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, a man who combined prudence with a ready wit, statecraft with a talent for compromise, and one who came to power after an indubitably great man. France, exhausted by glory and travail, had welcomed him as Louis the Desired.

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