FRANCE: Anonymous Millionaires

After the first drawing in their new National Lottery last month (TIME, July 31) Frenchmen discovered the disadvantage of being a winner. False friends swarmed on them. Old friends grew cold with envy. Neighbors called them stingy if they did not immediately step up their scale of living. Worst of all, they were obliged to buy everybody drinks, drinks, drinks.

When the Government announced the lucky numbers in the second drawing last week, most of the new winners kept mum. Since the Government exempts National Lottery winnings from the income tax and publishes winning numbers but not winning names, their secret was their own. Going to the Government bureaus to collect their prize money, many winners loitered for a time with the crowd pretending to wait for news, finally eased in through the door. When they emerged, they covered their faces with their hands to foil photographers, raced panic-stricken for cover. When 16 Frenchmen became franc millionaires (1,000,000 francs = $64,600), most of them stayed anonymous.

Not so the week’s biggest winner. Louis Ribiere. 32, a small coal-&-wood merchant of Avignon. At dawn he was irritably reaching for his breakfast coffee in an Avignon bistro when the barman pushed him a copy of the morning paper. Ribiere’s eye fell on the news that his ticket had won the 5,000,000 franc ($323,000) Grand Prize. He whirled, leaped into the air, vanished out the door, homeward bound to check his ticket number. It checked. He ran back through Avignon’s narrow streets to the building where his mother is a janitress. Yipping, prancing and slapping himself, he yelled. “Mama, wake up! Wake up! We’re rich!” As the other winners could have warned him. he was immediately surrounded by friends and neighbors, was buying round after round of drinks. Hours later he remembered he had not paid for the cup of coffee he was reaching for when he was still a poor coal man. He led a procession back to the bistro, paid for coffee and another round of drinks. Exulted he: “We shall sell the coal business. I never liked it anyway. My wife and I will make a trip, and when we come back I expect to start a new business that I have been thinking about a long time.”