" ... seul, en somme, votre gendre vous donne du souci. Que voulez-vous, il faut bien que dans toutes les familles, y comprises les meilleures, on compte un mauvais sujet ..."

Touching autograph letter dated and signed by Henri Béraud addressed to his mother-in-law while he was incarcerated at Poissy prison (46 lines in blue ink on one recto-verso page) relating his situation as a prisoner and worrying about his mother-in-law's failing health.
The letter is on letterhead from the infirmary of the central prison of Poissy, with fold marks inherent to being placed in an envelope.
Henri Béraud is very sad not to have been able to see his mother-in-law who encounters some health problems preventing her comforting visits to Poissy: "... j'ai été bien peiné de ne pas vous voir jeudi..." ["I was very saddened not to see you Thursday..."] but promises to see her again soon in good health: "... que du moins après cela je vous retrouve en belle santé et toute gaie, comme toujours..." ["may I at least find you again after this in good health and all cheerful, as always..."]
He asks for news of his helpful mother-in-law's family and positions himself as the ugly duckling of the family: " ... seul, en somme, votre gendre vous donne du souci. Que voulez-vous, il faut bien que dans toutes les familles, y comprises les meilleures, on compte un mauvais sujet ..." ["alone, in short, your son-in-law gives you worry. What can you do, it's necessary that in all families, including the best ones, there be one bad subject..."]
Finally, Henri Béraud ironizes about his condition so as not to make "his dear mama" feel too guilty about missing their meetings in the visiting room, Henri Béraud's only source of escape to the outside world: "... ne vous fatiguez pas surtout, comme je vous soupçonne de le faire, pour les colis de ce chenapan. Il est infiniment trop gâté, et une fois de plus, il vous remercien de tout coeur, pour la peine que vous prenez..." ["don't tire yourself especially, as I suspect you do, for the packages of this rascal. He is infinitely too spoiled, and once again, he thanks you with all his heart for the trouble you take..."]
A bon vivant native of Lyon, Henri Béraud was a journalist and international 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 totalitarianism in the inter-war period and the corruption of many French intellectuals. Friend of Roland Dorgelès, Albert Londres and especially Joseph Kessel whom he met in 1922 in Ireland when it was recently and partially liberated from British rule, 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-parliamentarism, Anglophobia (Faut-il réduire l'Angleterre en esclavage ? published in 1935 and dedicated to Joseph Kessel), and anti-Semitism "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 led to the suicide of the Popular Front's Interior Minister Roger Salengro, accused of desertion during the First World War. Arrested in September 1944 and sentenced to death on December 29, 1944 for intelligence with the enemy, he was pardoned by General De Gaulle.