Dumas goes down

HOW are the mighty humbled. Little over a year ago Roland Dumas was president of the Constitutional Council, the highest court in France, and so nominally the fifth-highest person in the land. This week Mr Dumas, still cutting a debonair figure even at the age of 78, received a prison sentence of 30 months—albeit 24 of them suspended—and a fine of FFr1m ($130,000) for corruption involving the Elf oil company. That is a bruising fall from grace for a man who has been variously a Resistance fighter, a long-serving Socialist foreign minister, and a lawyer for Picasso, Chagall and Braque. As he said during his trial, “Running the risk of being dishonoured at my age is unbearable.”