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By Root 2597 0

when he saw how ill Drue looked. In the visitors’ room, which was part of the censor’s office at the edge of Frontstalag 194, he demanded of a German officer, ‘What have you done with this woman?’ The officer was Captain Landhauser’s deputy, Damasky, whom Drue called ‘the blond German who had been polite to us when we entered the camp’. Damasky had not known until that moment that Drue was ill. He asked her, ‘Is this your sweetheart?’ When she said he was, Damasky offered to leave them alone for twenty minutes, adding, ‘But you must pass no notes to each other.’ When they were alone, Drue begged Jean to stop crying. He must not give the Germans the satisfaction of seeing his grief. ‘He blamed himself for getting me into this situation by permitting me to remain in France,’ Drue wrote. He told her that all the ‘good people’ in Barbizon, by which he meant those who hated the Nazis, missed her. Many friends were pleading for her release. Georges Hilaire, secretary general for administration in Pierre Laval’s cabinet, had written to the Gestapo in Paris to assure them that Drue was not involved in politics. Jean had asked Serge Lifar, the Russian ballet choreographer popular with the Germans, to appeal to Marshal Goering for her. Another friend had contacted Count Joseph von Ledebur, a friend of Charles Bedaux’s, to expedite Drue’s release. Jean urged Drue to feign illness so convincingly that she would be hospitalized. Just then, Damasky returned and asked Jean whether he had a pass to be in Vittel.

Jean admitted that he didn’t. ‘I can understand,’ Damasky said, ‘what one will do when one is in love.’ Damasky did not arrest Jean and allowed him to leave the camp. Drue, walking back to her hotel, stopped beside a tree and wept. An Englishwoman put her arms around Drue and said, ‘Darlin’, it’s awfully nice to have someone who loves you enough to come to see you. You shouldn’t be sad about that. He’s a very handsome man.’

The camp dentist, Dr Rolland, who was related to some of Drue’s friends in Barbizon, was trying to convince von Weber to send her to Paris. If that failed, he said, the superior of hospital sisters, Mother Mary de la Providence, would take her out of Vittel in a nun’s habit. Sylvia Beach had already noticed that most of the English nuns were working with the Resistance. Dr Rolland called Dr Lévy, who advised Drue, ‘Have a crise this afternoon in your room, and I will have you brought over to the hospital, but be very careful. I am told that some of the women in your room are Nazi sympathizers.’ He probably meant Noel Murphy and Gladys Delmass, who moved in collaborationist circles in Paris. Drue feigned her crise and was admitted to the hospital. Instead of pills to stop bleeding, she took tablets to increase it, imperilling her health. Sylvia Beach and Sarah Watson, who were still living in the hospital, made frequent visits to her bedside. Drue felt guilty for causing her friends so much worry, but she could not tell them the truth. She lay there for a week, growing steadily more frail. Then, one of the nuns rushed into her room and said, ‘I must get rid of your ash tray and cigarettes, it’s that Prussian brute, and he’s due on the floor today.’ They heard Dr von Weber’s heavy boots in the corridor.

Von Weber came into my room. I had no make-up on, my hair was hanging down, and I looked as wan and pathetic as possible. Dr. Lévy and Dr. Pigache, who accompanied von Weber on his rounds, stood at the foot of my bed, while the German sat down beside me and took my hand.

‘I hear, ma fille,’ he said, ‘that things do not go well.’

I left my hand in his and said, ‘No, not at all well, Herr Doktor.’

‘I still say you should have an operation,’ he insisted.

Drue said she would recover with X-ray therapy from her doctor in Paris. Ever the actress, she ‘squeezed a few tears’. Von Weber ordered the sister to bring him rubber gloves and Vaseline. ‘I was thoroughly scared now and loathed the idea of his touching me,’ Drue wrote. ‘I had a crise and put on a scene like a virgin. Dr. Lévy came around to