In Roubaix

From a bathing house in Roubaix, France, emerged one Mme. Cuvelier Desprez, 87, moving with the cramped, deliberate shuffle of the very old. About her wasted body, peaked shoulder, shriveled rib, a one-piece bathing suit hung in folds from whose lower regions projected the wishbone straddle of her thighs. Her face was lean, brown, seamed with a thousand lines. The bathing attendant tapped her on the shoulder. "Be careful, my old one! Not so near the edge. One slip and-- plumps--you would be in, hein?" Mme. Cuvelier turned on him the point of a yellow tooth. "Holy pig!" she replied, "I could swim ten miles before your mother was weaned. Voila--your hand, take it away. . . ." She plunged into the pool. The crowd cheered. Later in the day the women started a distance race. Mme. Desprez won it, swam for more than an hour, showed no sign of fatigue. Asked for a speech, she told the wondering throng that she had been born in 1839, that her father had been a teacher of swimming, that she herself had taught for many years in the Samaritan Baths in Paris.