Old Age

SAINT SATURNIN--Jean Schlumberger --Dodd, Mead. When old Madame Colombe dies peacefully in her bed at Saint Saturnin. her children Louis. Jourdaine, Nicholas speculate on the significance of her departure. None of them anticipates its most ghastly consequence: their father, deprived of his wife's tactful authority, begins a quavering descent into senile decay. The first sign comes when Nicholas goes to bring old William Colombe to the death bed. The old man snores loudly, pretends to be asleep. After his wife's funeral, he persuades an aging adventuress to remain at Saint Saturnin, apparently plans ,to marry her. The children get rid of Ninette but it does them little good. Their father takes up with a succession of trained nurses, asks each one to be his wife. With imperious disregard for dignity, he lets a village shyster cheat him out of the family fortune. Furious at his children's well-meant attempts to interfere, he gives orders for workmen to tear down his chateau, remodel it to suit his whims. He walks through his woods dressed in a smock painted to look like leaves, puts a green napkin over his head, sits down on a stone to make friends with the lizards. The efforts of William Colombe's children to control the follies of an old manwhom they have been accustomed to revere and over whom they have no authority is more tragic than the old man's maundering decline. Louis, able, conscientious, energetic, tries hard to save the Colombe fortune. Jourdaine, married to a petulant diplomat, stays at Saint Saturnin, harried by the spectacle of her father's second childhood. Nicholas, thoughtful and lonely, tries hard to keep up appearances at the chateau. Jourdaine's son arrives from soldiering in Arabia in time to help him. Their affection for each other is cemented by their sympathy for the old man.

An original study of death from old age. Saint Saturnin is a compressed, sombre novel, graced by an appropriate austerity of style. Rated by Author Andre Maurois as the most remarkable French novel in ten years and winner of the Northcliffe Prize, Saint Saturnin, with Night Flight (see col. 1) is the Book-of-the-Month Club's "duplicate" choice for August.

The Author. Educated at the Lycee Condorcet, Author Schlumberger, now 55, took up the study of religious history, gave it up before the War to write a play, poetry and novel. (His grandmother wrote children's books, his mother was a novelist.) With Andre Gide, he helped found La Nonvelle Revue Franc,aise, which published both Night Flight and Saint Saturnin. With Jacques Copeau. he founded the theatre of the Vieux-Colombier which produced two of his own plays.

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