An extraordinary tale of a Frenchwoman is told in British war papers published today about the betrayal of the French Resistance leader, Jean Moulin.
Revered as a martyr in France, Moulin was arrested in Lyons with several senior Resistance leaders, including Raymond Samuel, an engineer turned wartime paramilitary organiser, codename Aubrac.
As Moulin was living out his last hours in unimaginable suffering at the hands of the Gestapo, Samuel's wife Lucie was hatching a plot for her husband's escape.
The ensuing adventure - subject last year of the French film, Lucie Aubrac, starring Daniel Auteuil - was chronicled in detail by the couple's London-based sponsors, the Special Operations Executive.
The document relates how, in June 1943, after Samuel was captured, a heavily-pregnant Lucie posed as her husband's mistress, pretending she was carrying his illegitimate child. She begged his Gestapo captors for the chance to marry before he was brought before a firing squad.
The spontaneous tale of woe was accepted by a German colonel, who allowed Mme Samuel a meeting with her husband. The SOE account said: "She had provided herself with some sweets impregnated with typhus germs. During the interview with her husband she managed to convey to him by hints that they hoped to make an attack . . . in order to rescue him.
"She also gave him the typhus bonbons to take if the attack should fail, so that if he were transferred to hospital there would be more chance of arranging another escape . . ."
The ultimately abortive escape attempt was rapidly succeeded by another plan drawn up by Lucie, involving an ambush of the prison lorry taking Raymond Samuel between jail and interrogation at the Lyons Gestapo HQ.
Using three cars and a lorry, Mme Samuel and her Resistance fighters sprang the trap on October 21st, four months after her husband's arrest, after bribing her way to another interview with Raymond to sign their "marriage contract". The driver of the Gestapo lorry, ironically the prison executioner, was shot dead, along with two guards.
After a period on the run and a narrow escape from the clutches of Gestapo men looking for the couple's young son, who had been left with relatives, the family was finally flown out to safety in Britain early in 1944.