Castle to Castle (53 page)

208.
RIBOT.
Théodule Ribot (1839-1916). French psychologist of the associationist school.

211.
GREAT DESTROYER OF CARTHAGE.
(
Grand Pourfendeur de Carthage
) Jean Hèrold-Paquis. He concluded his daily newcasts with the words: 'Like Carthage, England will be destroyed."

217.
PETITPIERRE.
Perhaps Max Petitpierre, Swiss statesman, president of the Swiss Confederation in 1950, 1955 and 1960.

233.
ROCHAS.
Rochat. Intimate friend of Laval and Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the Vichy government.

236.
LUCHAIRE and CORINNE LUCHAIRE.
Jean Luchaire, French journalist (1901-1946). In 1927 he founded the week!y
Notre Temps
, which he directed until 1939, and in 1940 the evening daily
Les Nouveaux Temps
. In 1944 he called on the Germans to exterminate the Resistance. Commissioner of Information in Brinon's "Government Commission" in Sigmaringen. Fled to Italy in 1945 and was arrested. Condemned to death and executed. His daughter Corinne was a film actress. Sentenced to 10 years of "national degradation." Died shortly after of tuberculosis.

249.
LÉON DAUDET.
French writer (1867-1942), son of Alphonse Daudet. Notorious anti-Semite. Became a disciple of Maurras and founded with him in 1907 the royalist daily l'Action Française. Deputy from Paris from 1919 to 1924.

258.
DARQUIER DE PELLEPOIX.
Born 1898. Real name Darquier. De Pellepoix added after events of February 1934. Attacked Brinon for his Jewish wife. In 1942, appointed Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy government A fanatical anti-Semite, he strictly observed the German directives with regard to the Jews, and derived personal profit from the administration of confiscated Jewish property.

262.
ABETZ.
Otto Abetz (1903-1958). Starting out as a teacher of drawing, Abetz attended, beginning about 1930, meetings between young Frenchmen and Germans. Here he met Jean Luchaire. German Ambassador to Paris (1940). Hitler put him in charge of "Franco-German collaboration."

264.
SOUBISES WITHOUT LANTERNS.
Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise (1715-1787). Marshal of France. Defeated at Rossbach in 1757 by Frederick the Great. After this defeat, a caricature showed him wandering around in the night with a lantern, looking for his soldiers.

267.
ALPHONSE.
Alphonse de Chateaubriant (1877-1951). French writer. Goncourt Prize in 1911 for
Monsieur de Lourdines
. Visited Germany in 1935 and became enthusiastic over National Socialism. Member of the central committee of the L.V.F. In 1945, took refuge in the Austrian Tyrol, where he died.

272.
LESDAIN.
Jacques de Lesdain, extreme right-wing journalist, outspoken advocate of "collaboration.'' Director of
l'Illustration
during the Occupation.

272.
BERNARD FAYE.
Historian. Born in 1895. During the war, professor at the College de France. Appointed administrator of the Bibliothèque Nationale under the Occupation. Director of the anti-Masonic service of the Vichy government. In 1946, condemned to forced labor for life. Escaped to Switzerland in 1951. Given an instructorship at the Institut de lange française in Fribourg, but student protests forced him to resign.

276.
MORNET.
French magistrate. Prosecuting attorney of the High Court of Justice, acting at all the great anti-collaborationist trials after the Liberation (Pétain, Laval, etc).

278.
JE SUIS PARTOUT.
Extreme-right week!y published in Paris from 1933 to 1939 and from 1941 to 1944.

278.
FONTENOY.
Jean Fontenoy. Journalist. Former Communist Member of P.P.F. Joined L.V.F., killed in street fighting in Berlin in 1945.

280.
PURE AND SURE.
Speaking at a Socialist party congress, Guy Mollet declared that the party must become
"pur et dur"
(pure and hard).

281.
JARDIN.
Jean Jardin. Laval's office manager. Sheltered endangered Resistance members in his home.

281.
GUÉRARD.
Jacques Guerard, secretary general of the Vichy government Judged in absentia in 1947.

287.
N.S.K.K.
Nazionalsozialistisches Kraftfahrer-Korps. Association of National Socialist Truck Drivers.

288.
P.P.F
 Parti Populaire Français. Founded in June 1936 by Jacques Doriot and other Communist dissidents. In 1937 the party moved toward fascism, advocating an anti-Communist "front for freedom." Of all the French parties of the extreme right, the P.P.F. was closest to fascism in ideology and structure.

290.
F.T.P.
 Francs Tireurs et Partisans. Under the Occupation, an underground resistance group under strong Communist influence. In 1944, incorporated with the F.F.I.

295.
CHABANAIS.
The most luxurious and perhaps the most celebrated of Paris brothels, on the rue Chabanais in the Opéra quarter. Like all other French brothels, closed in 1946.

300.
ROBERT KEMP
(1879-1959). Eminent French literary and dramatic critic. Drama critic on
Le Monde
from 1944 until the time of his death.

300.
FUALDÈS
(1751-1817). French magistrate assassinated in 1817. An accomplice of the assassins played the barrel organ outside the ill-famed hotel to which he had been lured, in order to drown out his cries. The incident was the theme of a mournful popular song.

308.
NAVACHINE and the ROSELLI BROTHERS
(see above). The murder of the Russian economist Navachine and of the Roselli Brothers, Italian anti-fascist refugees in France, was attributed to the Cagoule.

315.
LALIQUE MÉTRO.
The first entrances to the Paris Métro were not designed by Rene Lalique but by another modern-style artist, the architect Hector Guimard (1867-1934).

316.
VERMERSH.
Jeannette Vermeersch, born 1910. Textile worker. Communist deputy from the department of the Seine. Widow of Maurice Thorez, secretary of the French Communist party.

320.
POELCAPELLE.
Town in Flanders where Céline was severely wounded in the head and arm in November, 1914, receiving the medaille militaire for his heroism. As a result of this wound he was trepanned and accorded 75% invalid status.

337.
ONE OF THEM JUMPED OUT OF THE WINDOW.
Allusion to the death of Pierre Brossolette (1903-1944), a resistance member who jumped from the sixth story of a building used by the Gestapo in Paris to avoid talking under torture. Historian and Socialist deputy, Brossolette was an adviser to de Gaulle in London. He was several times parachuted into France. 

339.
HENRY.
Hubert-Joseph Henry, French officer (1846-1898). Accused of having forged a letter, dated October 1896, from the Italian military attaché to his German counterpart, compromising Dreyfus. Arrested, he committed suicide in his cell at Mont-Valérien.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

NORTH

Introduction by Kurt Vonnegut,
Jr.

This (largely nonfictional) novel is set for the most part in a German village where, in the twilight of the Third Reich, conscientious objectors, prostitutes, a curious family of nobles, Céline, his companions, and various other refugees are gathered. Here they watch the distant air raids on Berlin and look with fear across the plain that stretches to the Urals. Céline works as a doctor; the prostitutes kill one of the nobles; the actor Robert Le Vigan goes temporarily insane; and as the victorious Allied armies approach, the village itself comes to reflect the fury and destruction unleashed over all Europe.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

RIGADOON

Introduction by Kurt Vonnegut,
Jr.

This volcanic novel (if Rigadoon can be called a novel) depicts the nightmare atmosphere of Germany in the last days of World War II. Céline, his wife, and the cat Bébert make their way across a ravaged landscape, from Rostock to Ulm, to Hamburg, and finally to Denmark. At Hanover, in the hellish glare of phosphorus bombs, Céline is struck in the head—an accident that unleashes paranoid visions on a cosmic scale. As he and his wife and their adopted band of slobbering, feeble-minded children board a train for Denmark, hallucination and reality merge and can no longer be distinguished.