Return of Arlette

For over a year, whenever two small French children have asked where their mother was, their old nurse has said: "In the hospital." The French Republic made itself a party to this story. From the uncomfortable little flat where the nurse had been keeping them on her own savings, the children were driven to a hospital and there for a few hours they saw their mother, Arlette Stavisky. widow of France's most famed swindler, once Chanel's most beautiful model, propped up in bed with her leg in a most realistic bandage. The children could scarcely believe their eyes last week when Maman came home.

Of the eight persons jailed for complicity in the eternal ramifications of the Stavisky case (TIME, Jan. 15, 1934, et seq.), none attracted greater sympathy than Arlette Stavisky, because of her beauty and because few serious students of the case believed that slippery Alexandre ("Sacha") Stavisky was the sort of man to give his dress model wife any inkling of his real business activities. For 14 months she stayed in the women's prison of La Petite Roquette, awaiting trial. From time to time she was hauled out for questioning. Every one of her pleas for release was promptly refused. Last week French authorities decided that whatever Mme Stavisky knew was no longer dangerous for French statesmen still in power. She was released to see her children, to try and find some way of supporting them. Still she was not free. If & when the great Stavisky Case ever comes to trial, she will be a defendant.

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