It is alays said that I tortured Molin. This is a lie, based on fantasy.
Moulin insisted that he was Jacques Martel. He said he was an artist. So I called my secretary and asked her to bring a sharp pencil and some paper. Then I asked Moulin to draw my portrait.
Moulin picked up the pencil and paper and started to draw a few lines. Suddenly he stopped drawing and started laughing. I laughed, too. Just by looking at his first lines one could see he couldn't draw anything. We both laughed openly. Obviously he was incompetent as an artist. Even in this he was like me.
I took the portrait that he had begun and I wrote on it, "Portrait by Max." I also wrote the date . . . This was oneof the papers which my wife had to burn after the war.
While Moulin and I were laughing together, something dramatic happened. I said, laughing, "You were a good mayer of Chartres, don't try to change your occupation." Immediately he stopped laughing and said, "In fact, I am Jean Moulin." . . . Then he added, "You surely don't expect me to tell you about my activities in the Resistance."
I sent him back to his cell where he was bound hand and foot. The truth is I was afraid he would try to kill himself again.
The next night I questioned him again. It was my duty . . . I was still quite impressed by him, probably because he looked a lot like me, physically. Also he was calm and firm in his manner, like me . . .
Once, near the end of June, I had to go away. I gave definite instructions to watch him carefully, but the guards were just regular soldiers, and they became careless. They left Moulin's cell for a moment, leaving him alone. This was enough for Moulin . . .
When I came back I ran to his cell, expecting the worst . . . Handcuffed, he had taken advantage of the only moment he was alone to run with all his strength and bash his head against the wall. I used all the medical resources we had available . . . I called Paris . . . and they ordered me to bring him there immediately. As soon as the doctors had finished their treatment, I put him in my car and drove to Paris . . .
Many years later I read in Paris Match in La Paz, Bolivia, about the end of Moulin and what happened to him after I left him in Paris . . . It said the Germans had burned his body and the urn containing his ashes had been in . . . Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. In 1964, the urn was transferred with honors to the Pantheon accompanied by the weeping of de Gaulle and the funeral prayer of Malraux . . .