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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2007 
The Last Time I Saw Paris
 MexicoCityCollege.com
Part VIII of The Last Time I Saw Paris, as transcribed by MCC historian Joseph M. Quinn from two 1947 issues of Mexico City College's "El Conquistador."
Since they took care of me the previous time I went back to Academie de Paris, but they could do nothing for me since they were being "terribly supervised." Then I went to the Dominican Friars, who, it turned out, were to do so much for Charlie and me. They couldn't arrange papers but they gave me a lot of good advice.
I managed to get a train ticket even though I didn't have papers. At the boundary between the unoccupied and the occupied zones the Germans inspected our papers.
In German I told the inspector that I had a good, well-paying job waiting for me on the other side. (It always flattered the Germans when I spoke perfect German, which I had picked up from studying at the University of Heidelberg and serving with the French embassies in Berlin and Vienna.) As a matter of fact, the inspectors at this point talked to me about Paris and offered me a job there if I would return. So they let me through, and I headed for Aix, where again I found Charlie.
At that time the Germans were coming around and making all the residents fill out long questionnaires, with instructions to bring them to the Prefecture in Aix by themselves.
A White Russian offered to take all the papers at once, supposedly to save us the trouble. But it was a bit mysterious and we declined the offer. We went to the Dominican Friars who helped us arrange to get married - under very romantic circumstances, it turned out.
We couldn't go to the mayor with a false name, such as Charlie carried. With the help of the Dominicans, we were able to get a special license through Msgr. Archbishop Villa á Rabel, who waived the ban.
So on May 122, 1941, in the home of my godmother in Aix, we were married in secret. An alter was set up in the parlor. The only witnesses were two Dominicans and two intimate friends. We had a wedding breakfast, with real coffee - a great rarity.
Our witnesses gave us a bunch of white flowers, which we took back to our house. People asked us the occasion and we merely shrugged our shoulders and said: "We just happen to love flowers."
Now that we had been able to get married, our next desire was to get out of France. Fortunately, I happened to remember an acquaintance I had made in Paris before the war, the secretary of the Mexican Embassy, Alfonso Castro.
I telephoned to Vichy and asked if I could see him. I spent three weeks in Vichy telling the Mexican Embassy officials of the desperate situation of my husband who had to get out of France if he wanted to escape death.
The Mexicans treated me wonderfully and agreed to give my husband a visa for Mexico. Then I asked, "How about me?" The Mexican ambassador replied: "Your husband's in danger, but you're not."
I showed him my bracelet with two hearts mated, and asked him, "Could you separate them?" It apparently touched him as a beautiful sentiment and he agreed to give me a visa for Mexico too.
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