FRANCE: Hospital Happiness

In the motley crowd of politicians, prostitutes, gangsters, detectives and hired editors who make up the cast of L’Affaire Stavisky, greatest political scandal since the War, no figure is more pathetic than that of Arlette Simon Stavisky, the once theatrically beautiful wife of the late swindler.

Sly little “Sacha” Stavisky was not a man to confide in women. No serious student of the case has ever suggested that the girl who was once the best-looking model at Chanel’s and who loyally bore him two children in the face of his impudent infidelities knew anything important about his machinations, except that he was a crook. Yet because she had once had possession of the bundle of check stubs which is the most notorious bit of Stavisky evidence to date she was clapped into La Petite Roquette prison last March, and there she has remained, except for a few brief excursions to testify behind locked doors before examining magistrates and parliamentary investigating commissions. Those who caught a fleeting glimpse of her on her way to these sessions were profoundly shocked. Arlette Stavisky has lost every vestige of her good looks, has become a twitching, haggard bundle of nerves.

She is also penniless. For the past four months her two children have been sup ported entirely by their old nurse in a tiny apartment. Every week the children are told that papa has gone to the U. S., that maman is sick in a hospital.

Last week the Government relented. That Arlette Stavisky might see her children she was taken from jail in a prison van to a private hospital. There her foot was elaborately bandaged. In a private room she played happily with her little son and daughter”. Yes, she said, maman looked thin because she was tired. Papa was still in the U. S.

Also in jail since March was M. Guiboud-Ribaud. onetime lawyer of Alexandre Stavisky. Losing patience he went on a hunger strike, sat in his cell last week screaming “Liberty or Death!”

Newspapers suddenly attacked the Government for suppressing long due reports on the murder of Judge Albert Prince last February, the most exciting Stavisky by path.