Vive l'Effervescence!

The April wind blew harshly and rain pelted down, but Paris' unruly students turned out by the scores of thousands last week to renew their protest march against the government. DEBRE, YOU BRIBED THE WEATHER BUREAU, said one slogan. MAMA, MAMA, YOUR SON IS IN THE STREETS, said another. And again: DEBRE, YOU BASTARD, THE PEOPLE WILL HAVE YOUR HIDE.

The specific target of their wrath was Defense Minister Michel Debre, whose new draft law ended student deferments for anyone over 21. The police reacted sternly to the protest, in some cases clubbing down the students, but the next day, not entirely by coincidence, Debre let it be known that he would not be a member of President Georges Pompidou's new Cabinet. The same day, it was announced that the controversial Loi Debre would be reconsidered.

It was thus with a tone of reconciliation, clearly influenced by the Gaullists' decline in the March elections, that Pompidou addressed the new National Assembly last week. Repeating a Gaullist promise of "bold reform," he conceded that France's recent prosperity "does not abolish, sometimes even accentuates, shocking inequalities."

The new Cabinet that Premier Pierre Messmer announced later in the week also suggested that Pompidou may yet make the "opening" to the political center that he has frequently promised but never quite delivered since he came to power in 1969. The Cabinet suggested even more strongly an assertion of Pompidou's personal authority. Of the 22 members of the new government, five are making their first appearance in any French Cabinet, and fully half of the rest seem to be loyal, committed Pompidolians first and Gaullists second.

No Easy End. The greatest surprise in the new Cabinet was small, balding Michel Jobert, 51, named Foreign Minister to replace Maurice Schumann, who had been defeated in the general election. A discreet but demanding and sometimes caustic former civil servant, little known to the public, Jobert joined Pompidou's personal staff ten years ago. At the Elysee Palace, he has functioned as Pompidou's Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Kissinger. Jobert, who has an American wife and a son in the American School of Paris, won himself many friends in Washington by helping with the difficult arrangements for the secret talks on Viet Nam. Though he now moves out of the shadows of the Elysee to the Quai d'Orsay, he remains Pompidou's man, carrying out Pompidou's foreign policy.

It is as yet unclear how Pompidou's new government will deal with France's continuing social unrest. There is no sign of an easy end to the ominous labor-government confrontation at the Paris Renault plant, where 7,000 employees have been locked out since 400 mostly foreign assembly-line workers began a strike for better pay and working conditions three weeks ago. Meantime, students are being actively recruited for a series of parades throughout this month, which Communist Labor Leader Georges Seguy promises will fully reflect what he calls "the general effervescence" in post-Gaullist France.

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