The Aristocrats

On a hot July morning in 1943, Yvonne, Comtesse de La Rochefoucauld, 41, and her handsome ex-cavalry-officer husband met for the last time outside the Cercle des Officiers in Paris. They pretended not to know each other. The Gestapo had arrested all but one of the British officers who belonged to the countess' intelligence group. London had ordered her immediate return to England. The count whispered: "I must embrace you once before you go." "We are in public," Yvonne said. "It is forbidden." Before she walked on, Bernard had just time to reassure her that the family jewels had been taken to a safe place.

That night the Gestapo arrested Comte Bernard de La Rochefoucauld, descendant of Franc,ois Due de La Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de Richelieu's great rival. Next morning the Germans picked up Yvonne before she could escape to England.

A Pile of Corpses. Yvonne was taken to Ravensburg concentration camp. For insubordination, she received 30 lashes and was committed to the care of the Nazis' sadistic quacks in the Ravensburg Experimental Station. Eight injections of poison in her right eye blinded it. Other injections destroyed the hearing nerve in one ear. Then the Nazis injected typhus into her blood to make serum. In the typhus block they did not bother to feed prisoners. The countess' last memory of Ravensburg was of feebly trying to fend off a ravenous woman prisoner turned cannibal. Two days later Yvonne awoke in Sweden. The Swedish Red Cross, accompanying Allied liberation troops, had found her among a pile of corpses.

Yvonne returned to Paris in November 1945 and tried to reassemble her life. Comte Bernard had died in a German prison camp at Flossenburg. The La Rochefoucauld chateau in Normandy had been bombed and burned. France had awarded Yvonne the Croix de Guerre with three palms and star for her war work. From England came the King's Medal for her work with British Intelligence. But the countess was hard up. Although she held a medical degree from the University of Paris, she could not practice because of her concentration-camp injuries.

Over & over she tried to puzzle out where her husband had hidden the missing family jewels, valued at 100 million postwar francs (about $286,000).

A Bill of Sale. Early this month another former concentration-camp victim gave Yvonne a tip. The name Yvonne gave to the police was that of one of France's best amateur horsewomen, the Comtesse Fides.de Marliave. Comte Bernard had known the Comtesse de Marliave casually before the war at the very smart riding club, Cercle de l'Etrier.

Last week police, accompanied by the Comtesse de La Rochefoucauld, raided the Paris apartment of the Comtesse de Marliave. In a bureau, nestling beside three golden wigs, they found the La Rochefoucauld sewing box and a gold necklace. At first the Comtesse de Marliave said the necklace belonged to her own family, but Yvonne produced a bill of sale to the La Rochefoucaulds; it was dated 1826. Then in a flood of tears, the balding 56-year-old Comtesse de Marliave admitted she had been given the jewels for safekeeping, had sold them to raise money during hard times. She accused her great & good friend, Sculptor Louis-Robert Sarlin, of arranging for their sale. "I gave him everything," she wailed. "He sold all the jewels and gave me back only 6,000 francs and one necklace." Sarlin was arrested.

Yvonne, Comtesse de la Rochefoucauld, returned home to write the Comte de Marliave, distinguished one-armed veteran of the first World War, "Yours is a very great name, and I still respect it." As for the still-missing jewels, she would wait and hope for their recovery by the police. The Comtesse de La Rochefoucauld allowed herself only one comment about the faithless Comtesse de Marliave: "To see her ride at the horse shows, who would have thought that she wore a wig?"

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