The Beautiful People

Whatever Paris may lack, the outside world assumes it has one thing in abundance: charm. Not so, says one Marcel Ranville, who has found it necessary and profitable to run a charm school in Paris and launch a campaign for greater "amiability." Some weeks ago, the Ministers of Public Health, Education, Commerce & Industry enthusiastically jumped on Ranville's amiability bandwagon, formed an official committee to better "the day to day relationships of the Parisian people." By last week Parisian relationships were just about as sweet as a midinette's smile.

The committee announced a list of the most amiable Parisians, as chosen in a poll. Among the winners: a cab driver, a policeman, a salesgirl, a dress model and smiling President Vincent Auriol himself. Perhaps the most notable of all the prizewinners was vast, maternal Mme. Denise Muairon, 52, an imposing pillar of Parisian lovability. Mme. Muairon, the concierge at Numero 19 Rue Daru, belongs to a profession that is usually rated about as amiable as a barbed-wire fence. Unlike her colleagues, who snarl at one and all indiscriminately, Madame has smiled benignly from her glass-enclosed niche at No. 19 on a succession of some 32 tenants, at least one of whom (Georges Clemenceau's daughter) remembered her in a will. When not smiling at her tenants, Mme. Muairon impartially turns her beatitude on the dustman, the postman, her husband Arthur, her devoted children Roger and Liliane and the cats Miki and Mikette.

Last week Mme. Muairon was feted at a celebrity-packed luncheon, whisked over Paris in a helicopter and showered with gifts. Alternately sobbing and giggling for photographers and newsmen, she described her joy: "I don't know how it all happened. All I know is that I'm gentille because everyone else is gentil. All those beautiful people. All those beautiful presents. Gentil, so gentil, everyone is gentil, and they say I merit it ... The only one in all the world that I can get angry with is myself--because I'm so fat."

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