languidly around the airfields of Normandy, between fields and
orchards where the peasants were already harvesting the apples
and grapes. He wished he were in East Prussia, and the wish be-
came master of the man: He needed rest and recuperation; his
heart was troubling him. In a letter to his brother-in-law Count
Eric von Rosen he referred to his “exhaustion.” On the last day
of October, attending a well-fed commanders’ conference on
winter training at Deauville, the Reichsmarschall mentioned
casually that he intended to go on leave “for a month or two.”
He began the long return journey across Europe in stages,
arriving back at La Boissière in pouring rain on November . He
decided to pause for a day or two in Paris, and on the fourth he
was at the Ritz again. Here in the capital of Occupied France he
was a different man altogether: no longer commander in chief of
a now-struggling air force, but Hermann Göring the noted art
connoisseur. Indeed, the contents of the captured treasure-
houses of France’s fleeing Jews were about to be spread at his
feet.