Virtue on Trial

Nobody loves a reformer, least of all those who have been reformed. The popularity that stern, erect Marthe Richard had won as a heroine of the underground in two wars soon dwindled when, in 1945, as a crusading member of the Paris Municipal Council, she succeeded in closing the city's brothels (TIME, Dec. 31, 1945 et seq.). Deprived of their comfortable evenings in such ill-famed establishments as Le Sphinx and Le Poulailler, Frenchmen sneered as the once systematically supervised prostitutes took to the streets and alleys of Paris to ply their trade. The venereal disease rate soared and even Marthe was forced to confess that her noble experiment had failed. However, she said, all the difficulties were the fault of legislators who had failed to provide social security for prostitutes. Bitter Parisians merely sneered the louder.

The editor of Paris' debunking journal Crapouillot (the Trench Mortar) last December went so far as to suggest that Marthe herself could do with some reforming. Citing her own book My Life as a Spy, the editor suggested that Marthe's heroism in the underground had consisted largely of a lightning-love rendezvous with Baron Hans von Krohn, German naval attache in Madrid in 1915. "Captain," Marthe had told her superior when the proposition was put to her, "it is a sacrifice costlier than death." "The Service demands it," answered the captain. "Before this beautiful duty, your small moral objections are worth nothing." After this exhortation, wrote the Crapouillot editor, Marthe Richard filled "a role which 30 years later she prohibited to thousands of unhappy girls who could not, obviously, justify themselves as patriotically as she had."

Marthe Richard's reply to these words was a suit for 1,000,000 francs. Trim and neat in a smartly tailored grey suit, the 62-year-old reformer sat stiffly in court while a 30-year-old lawyer defended her virtue. "But this affair was a command," shouted the young man. "Besides, Von Krohn was 70 years old at the time." "You are very young, confrere" murmured the opposing lawyer suavely. "A man of 70 is not necessarily repulsive. Why, I myself am 65 . . ."

Last week, after eight days of deliberation, the court awarded a token verdict of 50,000 francs ($130) to Marthe, but observed that Mme. Richard had nonetheless laid herself "open to criticism by the complacency with which in her memoirs she had narrated her affair with Von Krohn." Parisians seemed to take a mischievous delight in the court's comments. At last, cracked the newspaper Combat, "Marthe Richard's patriotic virtue has received its statistical evaluation."

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