" ...J'ai peu de choses à faire savoir à notre Germaine, si ce n'est mon habituel, éternel, sempiternel remerciement suite obligée de son éternelle, habituelle, sempiternelle bonté ! " ..."

Fine autograph letter dated and signed by Henri Béraud addressed to his mother-in-law while he was incarcerated at Poissy prison (45 lines in blue ink on a recto-verso page) suffering psychologically from his situation as a prisoner.
The letter is on the headed paper of the infirmary of the Poissy central prison, with fold marks inherent to being placed in an envelope.
The prisoner Henri Béraud recalls the intense joy of having had the consoling visit of his mother-in-law in a somewhat more private manner than usual: "... l'heureux hasard qui nous donna ce parloir tout intime. Souhaitons que ce ne soit là qu'un coup d'essai, et que tout concourra désormais à en faire une réconfortante habitude..." ["the fortunate chance that gave us this intimate visiting room. Let us hope that this was only a trial run, and that everything will henceforth conspire to make it a comforting habit"]
He asks his wife Germaine to send him some objects that would help relieve him somewhat of his condition as an inmate: " Il me faudrait un flacon d'encre bleue-noire waterman pour remplir le bel encrier dû à la gentillesse de mon épouse ! Une ou deux têtes d'ail, un ou deux crayons très tendres..." ["I would need a bottle of Waterman blue-black ink to fill the beautiful inkwell due to my wife's kindness! One or two heads of garlic, one or two very soft pencils..."]
Finally, Henri Béraud, conscious of all the psychological and material support shown to him, expresses his gratitude: "... Chère maman Mickey, je vous embrasse avec toute ma tendresse en vous disant à bientôt ..." ["Dear mama Mickey, I embrace you with all my tenderness while saying see you soon..."]
A bon vivant native of Lyon, Henri Béraud was an international journalist and reporter (Le canard enchaîné, Le Crapouillot, Petit Parisien, France-Soir and Gringoire) and a prolific writer (Prix Goncourt 1922 for Le martyre de l'obèse and Le vitriol de lune published a year earlier) whose political evolution, moving from the extreme left to the extreme right pro-collaborationist position, is characteristic of the inexorable rise of totalitarianisms between the wars and the corruption of many French intellectuals. Friend of Roland Dorgelès, Albert Londres and especially Joseph Kessel whom he met in 1922 in Ireland then recently and partially liberated from the British yoke, Henri Béraud defended very left-wing opinions. But after a trip to the U.S.S.R., he began to revise his positions while drifting toward anti-parliamentarianism, Anglophobia (Faut-il réduire l'Angleterre en esclavage ? published in 1935 and dedicated to Joseph Kessel), antisemitism "without realizing it" according to his friend the journalist Jean-Galtier Boissière. It was the Stavisky affair and its corollary the riots of the fascist and anti-parliamentarian leagues of February 6, 1934 that triggered Henri Béraud's manifest passage to the extreme right, going so far as to break his friendship with his great friend Joseph Kessel. In 1936, his violent articles in Gringoire would lead to the suicide of the Popular Front Interior Minister Roger Salengro accused of desertion during World War I. Arrested in September 1944 and sentenced to death on December 29, 1944 for intelligence with the enemy, he was pardoned by General De Gaulle.