Names! Names!

Sick abed though he was with twinging rheumatism, M. Anatole de Monzie, paunchy French Minister of Education, leaped from between sheets, tore off his nightshirt, wriggled into his flannel union suit and hastily dressed, cursing, when last week he learned that his honor was being smutted in the Chamber.

Matter of fact the whole Leftist Cabinet of Premier Camille Chautemps had been lashed for four excruciating hours by Rightist Deputy Philippe Henriot who monopolized the Chamber tribune, made the most of the French right of free speech. To hear him rant, the whole Cabinet were accomplices of "Handsome Alexandra" Stavisky, the $30,000,000 Bayonne pawnshop Ponzi (TIME, Jan. 15, 22). Accuser Henriot was sure that the Government "murdered" Stavisky whose body was found by Secret Service agents weltering in his blood at the Alpine resort of Chamonix, apparently a suicide. But Accuser Henriot went further. "When the unmarried girl who is now Stavisky's widow was arrested in connection with a burglary," he shouted, "she did not go to jail! They said she was with child and they put her in a hospital under guard. Messieurs, only two visitors were allowed access to the bedside of that young girl. Both of them are now Ministers of France!"

"Name them! Name them!" screamed virtually the whole chamber, many Deputies thumping their desk tops in excitement. "Names! Names!"

"Pachot could name them," cried Accuser Henriot. drawing out the suspense and naming one of the Secret Service agents investigating the Stavisky case. "Yes, Pachot could name those two and he would say they were de Monzie and Paul-Boncour !"

Unable to defend himself, snowy-crested French Foreign Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour was at that moment in Geneva on League of Nations business, but Accuser Henriot got only so far as the Chamber lobby when he was set upon by Minister of Education de Monzie fairly boiling to avenge his honor. Fresh from bed, rheumatic M. de Monzie managed to leap upon the back of M. Henriot and they went down clawing as a dozen deputies of Left and Right pitched into a clothes-tearing tussle, pulled each-other's neckties, knocked off eyeglasses and compared each other at the top of their lungs to loathsome animals.

Out of this welter emerged, as French tradition asserted itself, two seconds for each contestant who pulled them apart, sent for stenographic reports of what Accuser Henriot had said, and began to debate on a high chivalric plane whether there should be a duel. "It would be the first political duel since Clemenceau!" exclaimed bloodthirsty oldsters, delighted. "Just like old times! Remember how Clemenceau provoked Decassagnac to challenge him by walking up to Decassagnac in a cafe and stirring his coffee with his cane? Those were the times!"

Abruptly into this nostalgic atmosphere strode a fine black buck from Martinique, Deputy Joseph Samuel Lagrosilliere, brandishing like a club a rolled up copy of La Liberte which had cast upon him Stavisky innuendoes. Crack! and Crack! the Negro Deputy struck twice in the face with La Liberte one of its editorial writers. Deputy Desire Ferry. Smack!--Writer Ferry retorted with a punch to the jaw which sent Martinique's Lagrosilliere reeling groggily, then shouted at him, "I demand satisfaction by arms!"

Satisfaction by arms the Negro Deputy was willing to give, but few minutes later Writer Ferry contemptuously changed his mind, withdrew his challenge "under the circumstances."

Meanwhile from Geneva the Foreign Minister of France was excitedly telephoning that if he went to the bedside of a young girl in distress it was only as a lawyer hired by her uncle "and I never saw her again in my life or knew that she later married Stavisky!"

In the Palace of Justice this week Deputy Andre Hesse, onetime lawyer of Swindler Stavisky, was set upon and his robe nearly torn off by an indignant young attorney who kept shouting "How dare you show yourself here!" Pummeling each other the two rolled on the floor until separated and dragged before the president of the Paris Bar for a slashing reprimand.

Meanwhile Minister de Monzie and Accuser Henriot had not yet fought their duel, but the Government grew so nervous as debate on the Stavisky scandal was resumed that 5,000 foot and mounted police were thrown around the Chamber of Deputies. Angry citizens resumed their anti-Government demonstrations, shouted hour after hour in the direction of the Chamber "Assassins! Thieves! Staviskys!" Royalist demonstrators shouting "Down with the Republic!" and "Long live the Due de Guise!" [the Bourbon pretender to the Throne of France who lives in Belgium] smashed windows, tore up paving stones which they hurled at the police and thoroughly frightened U. S. tourists in a nearby hotel.

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