Description

Autograph letter signed and addressed to his lawyer Albert Nauddated 15 [February 1949] and received on 18 February 1949 (stamp):

"My Dear Master
I see that the sad Lecourt is replacing the sad Marie. I have a feeling that we're going to be pouncing on the last lampoons to butcher them... while behind the scenes the plutocratic collaborators, Communist "resistance fighters", clergymen, Buddhists, ministers, Brissons, etc.... the tedious merry-go-round. My death sentence will be a little sweetener for the jackals to distract them for a day, for example, the time it takes to clear 10 builders of the Wall. That's how I see it. The right to live too, and l'Humanité and Mauriac.
I would only ask you to be so kind as to send me the indictment and judgment. (I was never able to get a line from the Denoël trial). response to my conviction. I will write it verbatim. Very politely, but word for word. The story of the contumacious man who confesses his crimes has no more currency throughout the world than the confessions of the Cl [illegible]. There are trivialities that are only valid on the banks of the Seine - Parquet de la Seine. I wouldn't even mind being sentenced to death. The most terrible judge is the one condemned to death.
With my most loyal friendship".

In April 1947, after nearly a year in a Danish prison, Céline recovered at Rigshospital and his friend Antonio Zuloaga, press attaché to the Spanish Embassy in Paris, asked Maître Albert Naud to defend Céline. He agreed to defend L.-F. Céline and handled the case until its conclusion in April 1951. After the death of the author of Journey to the end of the nightIn 1961, his widow gave a cast of his hand to Albert Naud: "This hand will be my only honorarium, but I write that word with a capital H." (Defending them allRobert Laffont, 1973)

Lettres à son avocat: 118 unpublished letters to Maître Albert Naud. Paris La Flûte de Pan, 1984, no. 43, erroneously dated 1946.
Céline dictionaryPhilippe Alméras, Plon, 2004.