"Nous avons reçu aussi une lettre très gentille et très affectueuse de Mme jeune Gen Paul."

Autograph letter from Louis-Ferdinand Céline addressed to his lawyer Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen. Two pages written in blue ink on a large sheet of white paper; number "569" in Céline's hand in red pencil at top left.
Transverse folds inherent to mailing.
This letter was very partially transcribed in L'Année Céline 2005.
"La prescription de notre admirable Bourdemer sera suivie à la lettre. On va se bourrer de vitamines de telle façon qu'on va rajeunir de 20 ans, au moins !" ["Our admirable Bourdemer's prescription will be followed to the letter. We're going to stuff ourselves with vitamins in such a way that we'll grow younger by 20 years, at least!"] Céline had made the acquaintance of this "admirable" French doctor in Copenhagen, through his lawyer. This letter also mentions the wife of painter Gen Paul: "Nous avons reçu aussi une lettre très gentille et très affectueuse de Mme jeune Gen Paul. Le mystère demeure donc entier...malgré tout quand même, je pense à une petite "mission de renseignement"... Aucune importance d'ailleurs ! Tant mieux même !" ["We also received a very kind and very affectionate letter from the young Mrs. Gen Paul. The mystery therefore remains complete...despite everything, I still think of a little 'reconnaissance mission'... No importance anyway! All the better even!"] In early November 1950, Gaby Paul had come to visit Céline and Lucette at Klarskovgaard.
In 1947, Céline, pursued by French justice for his collaborationist engagement, was confined in Denmark. It was in May 1948, accompanied by Lucette and Bébert, that he arrived at his lawyer Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen's 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's imprisonment (which he had already served in Denmark). The Swedish consul general in Paris, Raoul Nordling, intervened on his behalf with Gustav Rasmussen, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, and managed to delay his extradition. On April 20, 1951, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, his lawyer since 1948, obtained Céline's amnesty as a "severely disabled veteran of the Great War" by presenting his file under the name of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches without any magistrate making the connection. Céline would leave Denmark the following summer, after three years spent at his lawyer's.