Bibiche

"Where is my wife?" asked S.A.O. Chief Raoul Salan when the Sante Prison gates closed on him in Paris last month. Slight, trim Lucienne Salan had been an army nurse when he met her in Indo-China in 1938, and when in 1944 Salan finally joined the Free French, she became an army driver. La Bibiche (little doe), the soldiers called the frail woman with the thin legs, the long face, the velvet eyes. But she was harder than she looked, and as her husband moved up the army ladder, she supervised his schedule, his appointments, his travel (avoid airplanes), even his drinks (Scotch with plain water, in a chilled glass). General Lucienne, they now began to call her.

In 1958 when Charles de Gaulle came back to power and Salan as French commander in Algeria debated how to receive him, anti-Gaullist Lucienne Salan announced: "If you go out to meet him, you will do it over my body." She lay down in front of the door, and Salan and a dozen high-ranking officers gently stepped over her. In 1961 Lucienne Salan followed her husband into the Generals' Revolt against De Gaulle, and when the putsch collapsed, she slipped into hiding with him. Lucienne adored her general; it was Salan's insistence on spending an Easter weekend with her in an Algiers apartment that led finally to his arrest --and Lucienne's own imprisonment in Fresnes Prison a few days later.

Last week, Lucienne Salan, weakened by a heart ailment, was released, allowed to go to a convent of her own choice, near Avignon. Against her had been lodged only the minor civil charge of using a false identity card. Her husband remains in Cell 57 of Sante Prison, preparing to go on trial for his life next week. His request to subpoena President de Gaulle and ex-Presidents Rene Coty and Vincent Auriol among 39 defense witnesses has been refused. But he has been granted use of an electric razor to shave off the mustache he was wearing as a disguise when captured.

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