Foreign News: Arthritic Immortal

Berlin fell. Hitler was reported dead. Paris was deeply stirred—for Gabrielle Colette, author of The Gentle Libertine and 20 other novels about love, had been elected to the Académie Goncourt. Now she would sit with "The Ten," the living literary immortals who each year award the Prix Goncourt to the best French novel. One newspaper killed Hitler's obituary to make way for Colette's biography.

Colette, 72, and heavily mascaraed, accepted the honor as an inevitable tribute to France's foremost woman writer. She breezed to the Goncourt election luncheon in a big black car. She hobbled with arthritic grace across the sidewalk through a lane of admirers and fellow Academicians. To flashbulbing cameramen she cried: "Mes enfants, you are ridiculous! You are machine-gunning me!" Archly she posed her frizzled, felt-hatted, grey head and pointed her sandaled, red-toenailed feet. What had she done during the occupation? "Mes enfants, I did the same thing as the last 15 years: nothing. I didn't budge. Why should I budge? A German colonel came. He told the concierge he loved only three things in the world—flowers, birds and Colette's novels." When she was asked if she would go to Berlin on Hitler's invitation, she answered: "My conscience as a Frenchwoman will dictate to me what I should do."

What would she do now? "But, mes enfants, what projects would you want me to have? I should like to love ... to live a little ... to have flowers . . . strawberries ... to live in a more tranquil universe ..."