FRENCH ROMANCE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4607, 9 October 1934, Page 6

FRENCH ROMANCE

A "Forgotten Man," who returned to civilisation, was met on the quay at Le Harve by a woman who, although she had never seen him, offered to marry him.

He is Benjamin Ullmo, the former French naval sub-lieutenant who was sent to Devil's Island, the dreaded penal colony in French Guiana, after being convicted of selling his country's naval secrets. The woman is Mile. Poirier, a nurse, who has worked ten years for his release, and whose letters to him have been his sole link with civilisation, reports the Sunday Chronicle.

"There he is. I should know him anywhere," shouted Mile. Poirier, singling out Ullmo as the liner Columbia drew in to the quayside. The couple had an affectionate greeting.

"I am free," Ulmo said afterwards, "and I have everything a man could want who starts life over again."

Twenty-six years in the penal settlement have left their mark heavily on Ullmo. His face is lined with suffering, and he looks old beyond his 52 years.

Ullmo's trial provided France with a sensation second only to that of the Dreyfus affair. There was a woman behind his fall—"La Belle Lison," whose extravagant tastes swallowed up his scanty pay. Soon German agents offered him large sums, totalling £40,000, but actually he received much less.

Ullmo was due to be released in 1914, but the War wiped him from the minds of the officials, and it was only the devotion of Mile. Poirier that secured his pardon by President Lebrun a year ago.

"Mile. Poirier," said Ullmo, "is the sole reason why I have hung on to life.

"She is the most noble of creatures. I was only afraid that her generosity might blind her about me."

Only a few minutes after landing they were both in the train for Paris.

"No words can express my fears as I approach Paris," Ullmo said. "I keep asking myself whether I shall fit in with modern life. Remember that when I left France in 1908 Bleriot had not flown the Channel."