During the war and for ten years afterwards the novelist Colette lived at 9 rue de Beaujolais. There is a plaque now , and a passage leading through to the Palais Royal where, on the corner, there is the best toyshop in the world (here we once bought a replica of Babar which is still adored by all visiting children; and Babar, who has just turned 80, has an exhibition in his honour at the Museum of Arts Decoratif). This photograph of Colette and her husband comes from David Burke's Writers in Paris: the trees of the Palais Royal garden can be seen through the window.