When Le Colonel and Mme. Mercailliion are reading in bed, he at first appears to be reading General Charles de Gaulle's "Memoires de Guerre," but just as he tells Mme. Mercaiillion that people aren't always what they seem, his book's jacket slips to reveal that he's actually reading "La Vie Exemplaire de Philippe Petain." Petain was a great hero of the First World War and a towering figure in French military and political circles until he became the leader of the Vichy French government after France fell to Germany in the Second World War. After the war he was tried and sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for treason.