“Eh, la bas,” shrugged a Cajun politico, gone down with Earl Long and the ship in Louisiana. “Cherchez la femme.” Congreve, with neither that pure Boogalee nor Scotland Yard French, said it so: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
La femme in the ointment was Blanche Revere Long, estranged wife of Earl and author of recent Long misfortunes. Begin with a woman neglected in favor of hooching and French Quarter strippers; add the fact she wished her mate out of the Governor’s Mansion. Note opportunity knocking in the woolly shape of Earl’s famous harangue in the Legislature. Blanche thought fast, enlisted the aid of some of Earl’s pals, and spirited the governor off to a Texas mental hospital.
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