FRANCE: The Hour Was Late

At 83, widowed and impoverished, Madame Albane de Siva had no Fairy Godmother, but she had always had very small feet. Last week when she read in Figaro that the shoemakers of Paris were holding a contest to nominate “Miss Cinderella of 1951”-the girl with the smallest feet-Madame de Siva left her tenement in Montmartre and jumped aboard the Pumpkin Coach.

In a chandeliered ballroom, among television cameras, popping flashbulbs, and flowing champagne, Mme. de Siva watched 15 giggling glamour girls trying unsuccessfully to squeeze their toes into a pair of gold kid slippers, size 3. Mme. de Siva stepped forward. People snickered, but the golden slippers slipped easily on to her tiny feet. Then the judge, no Prince Charming, took a look at black-frocked Mme. de Siva. Said he: “It won’t do, it won’t do.” She was too old to be Cinderella. “But the shoe fits,” she cried. Officials took the shoes off her feet, edged her, barefoot, off the platform. While she protested: “It’s a scandal. I’ll call the police,” they hurriedly shoehorned the size3 golden slippers on the feet of a 28-year-old stenographer named Huguette Granet. Huguette’s prize: a pair of shoes with four-in.-high heels, in a larger size, her proper fit. For Madame Albane de Siva, the clock had struck midnight.