After 90 days of sanctuary, Pierre Laval was "formally invited" by the hard-pressed Spanish Government to leave Spain.
At Barcelona the haggard refugee and his wife boarded the same Luftwaffe plane with the same Luftwaffe pilots who had flown them in. A few hours later they came down on a U.S. Army airfield in Austria. Rumor said that Traitor Laval had vainly offered his German pilots one million francs if they would head for Portugal. U.S. officers promptly turned Laval over to the French, who flew him to Paris.
At Paris' Le Bourget airfield, the prisoner, his wife and their 13 pieces of luggage were swiftly motored to Fresnes Prison.
There Laval was assigned to a 7 ft.-by-12 ft. cell, with an iron bed he would have to make himself. When officials sealed his luggage, the prisoner lost his taut composure, wept.
Next day he was whisked to court as a witness in the treason trial of Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain. The testimony of another figure from France's dingy past had prepared the way for him.
Weygand Testifies. To the crowded courtroom in the Palais de Justice, the Marshal's lawyers had summoned their star witness: ailing, emaciated General Maxime Weygand, 78, commander in chief of the French Army when it surrendered in 1940 and now under charge of high treason.
Scorning a chair, but leaning on a cane, Weygand hammered at the prosecution's case. "I will accept from no one," he cried, "lessons in patriotism and honor. What is honor? To be steadfast and to speak the truth. . . . Nothing will induce me to call Pétain a traitor. . . ."
Hotly the General denied the charge that Pétain had "plotted" France's defeat in order to seize personal power. He maintained that Pétain had secretly ordered cooperation with the Allies in North Africa. Testily he exchanged taunts with ex-Premier Paul Reynaud. If Pétain had erred, said Weygand, it was the fault of "his evil genius," Vichy's Chief of Government Pierre Laval.
One Charge Dropped. The court was impressed. The prosecution was disturbed —the more so, when the defense followed with a letter written to Pétain by U.S. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Marshal Pétain, said the former U.S. Ambassador to Vichy France, had often "expressed to me the fervent hope that the Nazi invaders would be destroyed. . . ." Suddenly Prosecutor André Mornet declared that he would no longer press the charge that the Marshal had plotted to defeat France. Hereafter, he would emphasize Pétain's record of collaboration after the Armistice.
The jury demanded to hear testimony from Pierre Laval. Both prosecution and defense objected. Presiding Judge Pierre Mongibeaux decided: "Nobody will understand if we do not hear Laval now. . . . I would like to see the Marshal, who was only a piece of bric-a-brac in Laval's hands, brought face to face with his 'evil genius.' "
Nonagenarian Marshal Pétain, who had dozed through much of the testimony in his behalf, suddenly sat up straight.
"Violent Emotion." The next day Pierre Laval shuffled into court, fedora in hand, grey-striped suit hanging loosely from his gaunt frame. He wore a soiled white tie. For two days he testified as the "court's witness."