Frenchmen Have Hearts

THE GENTLE LIBERTINE--Colette--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

People who lump the modern French novelists as an indistinguishable group of coldly salacious virtuosos, are not only generalizing badly but forgetting Colette. Colette's novels never wander far from love, to many readers they are probably mild aphrodisiacs. But there is nothing cold or vicious about them. The people Colette is interested in are perfectly normal, perfectly "nice." Minne was a most romantic young Parisienne. When her mother thought she was doing her history lesson she was really thrilling over the newspaper account of the latest Apache gang fight. So intensely did Minne dream about becoming Queen of the Underworld that when a handsome young loafer stared at her one day, the rest was inevitable. One night she thought she saw him under her window, ran down to catch him, but he was gone. So she looked for him and got lost in one of the worst quarters of Paris. Though she came to no harm, this escapade ruined her nubility, and she submitted to the family decision that she must marry her cousin Antoine, madly in love with her since the awkward age. Marriage with Antoine was a disappointment to romantic Minne. She took to experimenting with lovers. But they all left her cold. Her increasing despair made her reckless, roused Antoine's suspicions; it began to look as if their marriage would be a mess. In time's nick Antoine persuaded her to go with him to Monte Carlo for a fortnight. There the miracle occurred: Minne and Antoine found they were not so mismated after all.

The Author. Gabrielle Colette (Mme Henri de Jouvenel), 57, is famed in France as Foremost Woman of Letters and as an epicure. Her late first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars.* wrote many a lyric, essay and sophisticated lovestory signed "Willy." He collaborated with Colette on the famed Claudine series. Colette has written nearly 40 books. Though she did not invent the Modern French Woman in fiction, she is credited with supplying "the organs, the accuracies, the mind and the heart." Other translated novels: Mitsou (TIME, July 7), Cheri, Claudine at School.

*Last week, aged 71, he died in Paris.

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