Virorum illustrium de casibus

[originally posted 7 VI 2011]

1)

            For her hand did the prince risk all:

            He’d have her, though an empire fall.

Portrait of the Aethiope temptress here.

The lass for whom he lost the world, and was content to lose it

[Update II 2012]  Gone!  Censored!!  Down the Memory-hole !!!


[Update 1 VII 2011:
Pen-portrait here.

-- II 2012.   Now preceded by a wretched ad.
Lest the article itself be deep-sixed,  here is the beginning:

De sidération en sidération. Depuis ce dimanche matin 15 mai où les Français ont découvert, médusés, l'inculpation pour tentative de viol de celui qui allait peut-être devenir leur président, l'affaire Strauss-Kahn n'a été qu'une succession de coups de théâtre.

Incidentally… contrast the stunner in the first picture, with the more typical such employees in the second.  Turns out there may a good reason she is so beautifully turned-out:   It goes with her …. other job.

"When you're a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don't start at the Sofitel," the source said. "There's a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner."

The woman also had "a lot of her expenses -- hair braiding, salon expenses -- paid for by men not related to her," the source said.

[Update 10 VII 2011:  An innocent alternate explanation of how Diallo straightaway bagged such a plum job  here:]
http://www.lejdd.fr/International/Actualite/DSK-Nafissatou-Diallo-recrutee-par-une-ONG-au-dessus-de-tout-soupcon-355237/?from=cover

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[Update 2 VII 2011]:
Linguists crack the case !

(2)

            The dovecotes are aflutter,

            all atwitter is the gutter,

            over today’s delicious dirt:

             A Congressman, caught without his shirt!

He blew it, first by lying and then crying.

Gentlemen:  The proper response to the media hordes, in a case like this, is:
“This lies outside the sphere of your legitimate concern.”

A no-punches-pulled retort by Richard Cohen here.

(3)   In France, l’affaire is snowballing.   Ironic commentary here.

(4) [31 July 2011]
The latest wrinkle.