The mouse that ate France.

When you wish upon a star, the last thing you want to hear is sneering from French intellectuals. Makes no difference who you are. But for the senior Disney executives who, last weekend, opened Euro Disneyland, a $4-billion Enchanted Kingdom on the flat farmlands of the Seine-et-Mame to the east of Paris, the disdain of the French chattering classes was particularly unwelcome.

It was a Parisian theater director, Ariane Mnouchkine, who was the first aux armes. Euro Disneyland, she declared, is a "cultural Chernobyl." In Le Figaro last week, her colleague, Jean Cau of the Academie Francaise, wrote of "this horror of cardboard, plastic, atrocious colors, solidified chewing-gum constructions, and idiotic folk stories that come straight out of cartoon books for fat Americans. It is going to wipe out millions of children ... mutilitate their imaginations." The London Daily Telegraph reported that some French intellectuals have gone even further and demanded that the whole thing be burned to the ground. But the hostility has come not only from intellectuals.

On the eve of the public opening of Euro Disneyland-Disney's second overseas theme park, the first being in Tokyo-an electricity pylon was blown up near the site. Police suspect it was the work of protestors. And, on opening day itself, the spanking new railway station stood silent and empty as railway staff carried out a strike designed to rain on Disney's parade. President Mitterrand has neatly avoided siding with the opposition. When asked what he thought of Euro Disneyland, which he has so handsomely subsidized, he said: "I respect cultural expressions of a foreign origin, but it's not exactly my cup of tea."

Ignorance and impudence always go together, as the great William Hazlitt said. What are these people going on about?

In effect, what they are objecting to is large numbers of people willing to pay $42 for an adult and $25 for a child to enter a totally harmless and innocent world for a day. The gateway to Euro Disneyland is a perfect reproduction of the main street of a small American town at the turn of the century, with railway station, gas-lit lamps, and horse-drawn street cars. Balzac would have been very happy here. And Tocqueville, with his immense curiosity about all things American, would have been in his element in the copy of the small Western town of Thunder Mesa and, beyond it, in the Grand Canyon, where wolves howl from the heights and antelope roam. The most ferocious creature in the place is the fiery green dragon in the dungeon of Sleeping Beauty's castle. There is no loud rock music, there is no alcohol, and nowhere can you buy a packet of cigarettes.

And this is going to wipe out millions of children?

The French, defying their self-appointed arbiters of taste, poured into the park in their thousands on opening day (April 12). Some waited four hours to get in. A nation that loves novelty and gadgets was not going to be left out of this big event. Some arrived already kitted out in cowboy boots. They wore Levi jeans, they wore Ray-Bans, they wore jackets imprinted with "U.S. Marine Corps" or "Miami Dolphins." They were soon looking even more chic. Frenchmen stepped out of the Thunder Mesa general store wearing ten-gallon hats, and little French girls sprouted Minnie headbands with black plastic mouse ears. They made telephone calls home: "Ouiiiii ... je suis i Disneyyyy."

The French, as we know, are beautifully hypocritical about America. It is still a source of great embarrassment and shame that Uncle Sam had to come and rescue them from the Germans. They glibly talk of the wickedness of American imperialism, but there is envy in their words. They would like to be the most powerful country in the world and they are not.

They watch American films, they wear American clothes, they eat "le fast food," they read comics, they use American expressions. It is that most passionate of human relationships-the love-hate one. But the ordinary Frenchman, unlike les intellectuels, is not frightened by Mickey Mouse, nor does he feel that Dumbo is going to displace Voltaire or Montaigne.

In the Enchanted Kingdom, the Disney executives, quiet men in grey suits, have performed magic. They have taught the French to smile. I know France well; I have studied there and lived there. At Euro Disneyland (where about half the workforce is French), I heard uttered from French lips for the first time ever in my life, the words, You're welcome. That's no trouble."

The reporters from Liberation newspaper, read by all those who wish 1968 were still with us, sneered, of course. "Of the two who dominated the crowd on the balcony of Sleeping Beauty's castle, the president of the Walt Disney company was the one without the big black ears," they wrote. But even they noticed this curious phenomenon of smiling, which, they said, quite unsettled home-grown visitors. One of the French staff confided to them, they reported: "The foreigners are used to being smiled at, but the French don't understand it. They think they are being taken for idiots."

The Disney executives have fallen over backward to place the park in a European cultural context. French is the first language of Euro Disneyland. Sleeping Beauty is La Belle au Bois Dormant, and Snow White and her little friends are Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains.

Robert Fitzpatrick, president of Euro Disneyland, speaks impeccable French. Michael Eisner, chairman and chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, found himself explaining to French visitors that "Snow White" is a German fairy tale, "Pinocchio" was written by an Italian, "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" were both written by a Frenchman, Charles Perrault, and the characters Mary Poppins and Peter Pan are English. In a sense, he said, in his opening speech from the ramparts of Sleeping Beauty's pastel pink chateau, all these characters have come home to their roots.

On the day before the park opened to the public, Mr. Eisner dealt with the subject of the French intellectuals and their absurd squeals of distaste. He said: "Look, when we were told about this, we sat down and tried to figure out just who these French intellectuals were. When we found that some of them could be Communists, we didn't see why we should have to take any notice of them, anyway. But we think that if they bring their children to Euro Disneyland they will have a good time."

However, given another excuse to vent their favorite charge of U.S. cultural imperialism, the French intellectuals are already having a hell of a good time.