Europe, Oui! Oysters, Non!

"Elizabeth of England will be well received here," surmised the French weekly L'Express just before the Queen's arrival last week. "The French adore other people's monarchs." Almost everywhere Paris bespoke as much. Huge Union Jacks caught the spray from the Lalique fountains at the elegant Rond-Point des Champs-Ely-sees, and the Cross of St. George decorated the flower pots in front of a Pierre Cardin boutique in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore.

It rained on nearly all of Her Majesty's parades ("The Queen's weather," mused Le Monde), but the drizzle failed to dampen the French welcome. "Bigger crowds for the Queen than for the referendum on Europe," observed the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchai=ine. Elizabeth's French, several reporters noted, was far better than Prime Minister Edward Heath's, and one columnist confided to his readers the great discovery that "the Queen likes all French food except oysters."

Amidst all the obsequious effusions, there was a glancing barb at the Queen's taste in hats--"For 20 years the same hat, to avoid hurting her hatter's feelings," teased one columnist.

Nonetheless, the Queen's second state visit to France in 15 years was a regal affirmation of the current warm state of Anglo-French relations. As President Georges Pompidou discreetly noted in his welcoming speech, "some hesitations and difficulties of an old love affair begun in 1957" had occurred in the meantime. Later, at a banquet Her Majesty remarked: "We may drive on different sides of the road, but we are going the same way." The same way, of course, is a united Western Europe, and with the Queen's visit Britain seemed all but signed, sealed and delivered into the Common Market.

For the Queen, perhaps the most significant event was one with purely personal implications. After a triumphal tour through the south of France, Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, paid a call on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at their house in the Bois de Boulogne. It was the first time that Elizabeth, 46, had visited their home since her uncle abdicated in 1936. It may well be the last: the former King Edward VIII, now 77, is gravely ill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.