"Je ne sais pas quels crimes j'ai commis mais pour ces fourbes canailles du 18eme Arrt. ma légende de bistrot en bistrot est devenue un Super Niebelung d'horreurs ! C'est rigolo. Au point qu'aucun n'ose me venir voir ici !"

Autograph letter signed with the paraph of Louis-Ferdinand Céline addressed to his lawyer Master Thorvald Mikkelsen. One page written in blue ink on a large sheet of white paper; number "566" in Céline's hand in red pencil at the top left.
Transversal folds inherent to mailing.
This letter was very partially transcribed in Année Céline 2005.
Early November 1950, Gaby Paul had come to visit Céline and Lucette at Klarskovgaard: "Mme Gen Paul a repris la route de Montmartre toute ravie de votre accueil ! A moi de vous remercier chaleureusement car enfin j'espère que votre généreuse réception me sera comptée "à indulgence"..." ["Mme Gen Paul has taken the road back to Montmartre delighted with your welcome! It is for me to thank you warmly because I finally hope that your generous reception will be counted in my favor as 'indulgence'..."] Through her intermediary, Céline evidently received news of his former Montmartre companions: "Je ne sais pas quels crimes j'ai commis mais pour ces fourbes canailles du 18eme Arrt. ma légende de bistrot en bistrot est devenue un Super Niebelung d'horreurs ! C'est rigolo. Au point qu'aucun n'ose me venir voir ici !" ["I don't know what crimes I committed but for these deceitful scoundrels of the 18th district, my legend from bistro to bistro has become a Super Niebelung of horrors! It's amusing. To the point that none dare come to see me here!"]
In 1947, Céline, pursued by French justice for his collaborationist involvement, was confined in Denmark. It was in May 1948, accompanied by Lucette and Bébert, that he arrived at his lawyer Master Thorvald Mikkelsen's home at Klarskovgaard. The latter owned a large property by the Baltic Sea and invited the exile to stay there. On February 21, 1950, as part of the épuration, the writer was definitively sentenced in absentia by the civic chamber of the Paris Court of Justice for collaboration to one year of imprisonment (which he had already served in Denmark). The Swedish Consul General in Paris, Raoul Nordling, intervened on his behalf with Gustav Rasmussen, Danish Foreign Minister, and managed to delay his extradition. On April 20, 1951, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, his lawyer since 1948, obtained Céline's amnesty under the title of "severely disabled veteran of the Great War" by presenting his file under the name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches without any magistrate making the connection. Céline would leave Denmark the following summer, after three years spent at his lawyer's home.