as Damia, Josephine Baker, Suzy Solidor, and Yves Montand, the successful ones were few and far between. "Ma môme, ma p’tite môme [or gosse]" (sung by Damia and Yves Montand) and the songs from "Irma" were the exception. She did write two fairly successful songs during the 1950s with women lyricists, however. She collaborated with Claude Délècluse and Michelle Senlis on "C’est à Hamburg" (1955), an even better song called "Les amants d’un jour" (1956), and then "Comme moi" (1957). These songs were a synthesis between the first years of the Monnot-Piaf collaboration and the post-war song, between the time of the legionnaires and the end of the dream of colonialism. In 1957, Monnot met the lyricist Michel Rivgauche, with whom she was to write "Salle d’attente", "Fais comme si", "Tant qu’il y aura des jours" and "Les blouses blanches", at Piaf's apartment . In 1959 Edith Piaf recorded Milord, which became a major international hit and one of Monnot's biggest success. As many of Piaf's biographers tell it, the friendship between the singer and Monnot suffered a serious setback, if not a death blow, after Piaf met the composer Charles Dumont in the late 1950s. Dumont composed what was to be one of Piaf's greatest signature tunes, "Je ne regrette rien", whereupon Piaf took 11 of Monnot's songs out of her repertoire for her upcoming performance at the Olympia to make room for more Dumont songs. Monnot became ill with symptoms of appendicitis during her last year of life, 1961. She seems to have had a premonition that her illness was life-threatening, yet she failed to follow medical advice and have the operation she needed. Her deep sadness in the last months of her life reveals itself in the following excerpt from a letter to her friend, Madame Niaudet: "It means nothing to get old, if you are always surrounded by your loved ones. But how horrible it is to be alone most of the time. I have a tremendous need for rest, especially mentally and emotionally. How terrible it is to have been born too sensitive! Will I soon find the calm I so badly need? There are times when I just despair. Alone in my room, the radio! All those notes! All those minutes, at the end of which lies death and, before the final end, the death of the heart, the love life. It's dreadful, this