TRAGIC WIDOW

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 33, 2 November 1937, Page 14

TRAGIC WIDOW

Madame Stavisky to Wcd Again BEGINNING LIFE ANEW PARIS, Oct. 9. ' | Arlette Stavisky, tragic widow of the Iflnancier whose £7,000,000 swindlee Irocked the world, is to marry again. I Romance will help her to forget four years of hell — four years in which she was dragged from palace to prison and to poverty. Mme. Stavisky %vaded aU jattempts to interview her. She slipped iout of Paris for a secret destination. ,But before she left she confided to a friend: ' ' My four years of hell are over now.. fl am going to begin life anew." Recently she made the first effort to ;wipe out the memory of those four years. Arlette Stavisky applied in tho. Paris law' courts for permission to change her name. And with the disappearance of that: naine — Stavisky, Arlette, her nine-year«, old son Claude, and seven-year-oldj daughter Micheline, begin a new life. • ; Beautiful Mannequin. I Thirty-four-year-old Arlette was a mannequin before her beauty attracted 'Alexandre Stavisky. He mafried her and with his wealth she blossomed into the society queen of Paris. Then came the crash. Stavisky dig-J appeared. Investors had been swindledj out of £7,000,000. . i There was a inan-hunt throughout France. Police traced him, He-wa« shot as they battered down the door. The verdict was suicide. There wero ugly rumours that Stavisky had bee* silenced. The beauty whose salon was thoi centre of Paris was taken to thoj women 's prison. She sat on a woodea1 bench, stitching coarse sheets. Her. complexion faded, her face be^ came haggard and drawn. For .fivfj months she did not see her children. Then the Freneh Minister of Justic^ allowed her out on parole — for one hour^ She was taken to a Paris hospital^ Claude and Micheline came to see her, Then she went back to prison, solxj bing her heart out. At last Arlette Stavisky was broughtj ,to trial. She went into the box, falteredj out her story. At the mention of her; husband's name she broke down. "Ij loved him," she cried. "I was my dutjj to stahd hy him as a wife and mother ..." and she collapsed in the box. i " =In January last year, more than twO| years after her husband's deathJ Arlette Stavisky was found not. guiltjfl jbf complicity in his frauds, , The first part of the orde&l was overJ jShe had survived two years of hatredj of scandal, of suspicion, I Back to Her Children. f ' Now Mmrne. Stavisky, penniless, had to earn her living. Ten days after he^ iacquittal in Paris she arrived pn Broad^ way. She took up a £10-a-week job ai (a show girL She sang and danced amongj 50 French "nudies." She sent home half of her wages .toi jCamille le Francois, the nurse who haq jdeyoted herself to the two children. Shej libecame Arlette Simon, show girl, bulj (the world still knew her as Madamt Stavisky, wid6w of a swindler. But Arlette Stavisky could not stajj jaway from her children. After si4 jmonths she returned to France to sed jthem. She now plans to give .them -g jnew home. She has fallen in love againJ ; First she will formally rid herself ofi Ithe name of tragedy, Stavisky. An« 'then she will take a new one — her hus jband's. . . i For Arlette, after fonr years of helL jlife begins again, - * 3