Yvonne Chevallier had none of her husband's social skills.

Gaunt and prematurely haggard, she was best be described as plain.

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A photograph of the woman at age 40 bears a marked resemblance to the American character actress Nancy Kulp, the homely Miss Hathaway of TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies."

Mrs. Chevallier did not feel comfortable in her husband's Paris social and political circle. She was the anxious type—owing perhaps to the travails of war and the stress of child-rearing.

Biographical sketches of the woman painted her as dull, witless and rather uncouth—an uneducated farm girl more at home in a barnyard than a castle. Crime author Colin Wilson described her as "awkward, gauche, and conversationally clumsy" in his Mammoth Book of True Crime.

After a dozen years with Yvonne, Chevallier had begun to treat his wife with coolness.

Sometime in 1950, son Mathieu developed an illness that lingered for several weeks. Yvonne moved the boy into the couple's bedroom in case an emergency developed overnight.

Pierre began sleeping in the study during the illness, and he stayed there when Mathieu recovered.

Yvonne tried to win back her husband's affection. She read about art and literature and tried to stay abreast of politics. She made appointments at fashionable beauty salons and bought more flattering clothes.

She did her best to entice Pierre with romantic blandishments on the nights that he spent at home. But he made it resoundingly clear that he had lost all interest in intimacy with his wife.

He told her, "You disgust me."

His coolness had become contempt.