Autograph letter signed
[Fort d’Ivry], November 4, 1938.
1 1/2 pages on 1 sheet (210 x 270 mm) in black ink.
Autograph letter signed twice to Marie-Louise Terrasse, known as Catherine Langeais.
François Mitterrand has just been incorporated into the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment, under whose flag he will fight in the French campaign.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
Catherine Langeais (1923-1998), whose real name was Marie-Louise Terrasse, and François Mitterrand met on January 28, 1938, at the ball of the École normale supérieure. Two years later, when he was a prisoner in Stalag IXA in Hesse, he described this meeting to Jacques Biguet, one of his fellow prisoners: “One Saturday, I was feeling down in the dumps, I went into my room, I came across some Bristol board that I had forgotten on a table. It was an invitation to Normal Sup’s ball. I went. I saw a blonde with her back to me. She turned towards me. I stood rooted to the spot. Then I asked her to dance. I was crazy about her.” The blonde girl was accompanied by her parents, who had forbidden her to give her name to her partners. Mitterrand would call her Béatrice, in reference to Béatrice Portinari, the Florentine of The Divine Comedy. She only told him that she was a pupil at the Lycée Buffon, in the third year. From the Monday, he watched her leave the school, followed her from a distance, discovered that she lived near the Place Denfert-Rochereau. Until their first kiss in the Luxembourg Gardens.
François Mitterrand was truly won over, as never before in a relationship. He had already asked Marie-Louise’s parents for her hand in marriage, but the girl’s mother considered the marriage premature. Marie-Louise was not yet 16 and François had not completed his military service. ‘Never mind!’, he replied. As a student, he could have had his call suspended again. He would go ahead and report for duty in September, for love. He could have asked to be assigned to a reserve officers’ school in the provinces. “He chose the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment, again for love. A decision he would pay dearly for. For the time being, he can congratulate himself on not moving away from Béatrice, whom he also calls “his little peach”. He is incorporated into the Ivry fort, then assigned to the Lourcine barracks, boulevard du Port-Royal, in Paris” (in Robert Schneider, Les Mitterrand). On November 4, 1938, he saw Marie-Louise, had lunch with his father and Robert, and then returned to the Fort d’Ivry.
He wrote to her immediately – it was the very first letter he had written since his enlistment – “on paper kindly lent to me by one of my new colleagues (already in the habit of confessions)… I am still in the atmosphere of your presence.
A little while ago I held you against me, and I could tell you of my love […] now I feel the pain of knowing you are far away […] no need to come back on your promises: they are for life. I will impatiently await your letters – and the proof of your love […] Perhaps I will be released for at least a few hours on November 11 or 12. If so, I will write to you: we will do everything we can to see each other. My dearest, I love you. F.”
In September 1939, mobilization began, followed by the departure to the west of the Maginot Line. The engagement took place during leave on March 3, 1940, at the Terrasse residence in Paris. Then it was back to the front. On June 14, after terrible fighting for which he was decorated, he was wounded by shrapnel in Verdun. Evacuated to a military hospital, he was captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp. This was François Mitterrand, “K.G.”, for Kriegsgefangener, or prisoner of war, with the serial number 27716-968 of Stalag IX-A, near Ziegenhain, in Thuringia. He escaped from there – after two initial failed attempts – in January 1942.
François Mitterrand wrote more than 300 letters to the woman he called Zou. Despite their engagement in March 1940, he never married her. The war, then captivity, kept them apart. In pain for Mitterrand; in June 1942, he wrote to his confidante, Marie-Claire Sarrazin: “Do I still love this Béatrice with her disturbing doves? Surely. But I love her because I loved her and there is a nuance there. I do not suffer and then love outside of her. But she will never be a stranger to me and is now for me one of those ‘little allegorical goddesses’ of which Proust speaks […]. The beautiful road of ideal walks that attracts me is still hard to my step – love seems to me perfect or rather complete only when it is sensitive. And yet, there too bitterness is close at hand.”
A few omissions at the edge of the page without affecting the text.
