FRANCE: Brave Old Wheelhorse

(3 of 7)

Only once was Auriol's local reputation attacked. On the eve of an important election, his glass eye (the original was lost in a childhood accident) was found in the bed of a well-known lady. His political friends hastened to explain that they had used the room for a Socialist Party caucus and that Auriol's eye had popped out in a moment of oratorical exuberance. This happened to be the truth, but Muret's citizens preferred to believe a more entertaining account of how the eye got in the bed; delighted with their gallant representative, they elected him with a larger majority than ever.

Auriol made Muret (pop. 4,368) one of the best-run and most progressive towns in southwestern France. He built a municipal hospital, two new parks, a radio station and a special school for training crippled children.When visitors asked him the reason for the town's prosperity, Auriol would explain: "It's Socialism." Other Muret citizens had a more personal explanation: "It's Auriolism."

How a Doctor Disappeared. On July 10, 1940, in the Casino at Vichy, the deputy from Muret was one of 80 members of the Chambre des Députés who, against an opposition of 569, voted no to giving plenary powers to Pétain. Because of his stand, he was imprisoned for seven months, then sent home to Muret under house surveillance. When the Germans occupied the southern zone in November 1942, Auriol was marked for arrest again. Just two steps ahead of an SS division, Vincent and his wife slipped away from the house at Muret.

Two days later the villagers of Gissac, in Aveyron,noticed the arrival of a strange new doctor and his wife at the small local Catholic hospital. The priests seemed to treat Dr. André Viaud, a spent-looking retired practitioner wearing the beginnings of a scraggly beard, with unusual respect. When a man stopped him on a walk and asked him to look at some peculiar red splotches on his daughter's face, Dr. Viaud failed to oblige. Instead, he hurried back to the hospital and sent one of the other doctors. He even avoided a chat with one of the townspeople about a sick cow.

As Dr. Viaud, Vincent Auriol spent a year in the Maquis. In October 1943, word came through the underground that he was needed for De Gaulle's consultative assembly at Algiers.

One night, at the village of Villevieux in central France, Vincent Auriol silently crawled in among the sacks in the back of a mail truck. Then the truck jounced past two German sentries, on its way to an open field six kilometers from town. Thirty townsmen had already slipped out to the field, to signal with flashlights to an approaching R.A.F. plane. Shortly after midnight, Auriol, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and three other passengers were safe in the air, bound for London.

Between Yesterday & Tomorrow.After two shivering weeks in London (his British clothing points did not stretch to an overcoat), Auriol was flown to Algiers. He was a worried man. Both his wife and their son, Paul, had remained in France, working with the underground.