Rebuilt ruins

The main street of Pont-en-Royans, just before you reach the Picard Bridge over the Bourne, used to be narrow and dangerous. The situation improved considerably, a few months ago, after the removal of a couple of derelict buildings that used to form a blind corner. Last November, I took this photo of one of these buildings, built against the steep slopes of one of the two mountains that form a backdrop to the village of Pont-en-Royans.

Yesterday, I took a photo of the remains of the rear end of the demolished building.

As you can see, the stonemasons are quite expert at restoring ruins, to make them look as good as new. Obviously, this is not a mere matter of aesthetics, designed to fool passers-by into imagining that there might be a nice little room and balcony to rent up there (if only you could access the structure in one way or another). No, they've patched up the ruins, consolidated them and smoothed them over with fresh mortar (like the façade of my house at Gamone) for a practical reason. The presence of those old walls prevents landslides and falling rocks. So, what you see there is an excellent example of environmental sustainability.

PS I'm tempted, one of these days, to start spreading a rumor that, on certain wintry evenings, a ghostly female can be seen at the window, with a lit candle, reciting the names of the Huguenot soldiers who were slain by Antoine de Sassenage during the 16th-century Wars of Religion and then thrown from the nearby walls into the Bourne. From a touristic viewpoint, that's what's missing in Pont-en-Royans: a few good ghosts.

Ultimate travel

It was particularly hot yesterday. Towards the end of the afternoon, when Pif had reluctantly gone home (after ten minutes of persuasion from his mistress Alison, who wasn't happy with her dog's new behavior), I took Sophia down to Pont-en-Royans for a swim in the Bourne. Lots of people had gathered there for the annual Wood Festival... which is not very exciting. Hearing the sound of a lawnmower above my head, I looked up and saw a fellow flying a paraglider above the village.

An engine was attached to his back, with a propeller housed in what looked like a big silver bicycle wheel. In this way, he was able to fly/glide at a constant low altitude. He made it look as easy to get around in the sky as riding a bike. You could almost imagine him using this contraption to fly down to St-Jean-en-Royans to buy his groceries.

Rocky combat

In my article of 3 January 2008 entitled Fragile existence [display], I described a rock that had rolled down onto the road between Gamone and Pont-en-Royans. Shortly after, as indicated in my article of 12 January 2008 entitled Valley on the move [display], another rock rolled down onto that same stretch of road. And more recently, in my article of 27 March 2008 entitled Law of motion [display], I evoked an awesome stone column up on the slopes of Mount Baret, above that same road.

Over the last week, a small team of woodcutters, attached by ropes, has been cleaning up the area where the last rock fell, which lies directly beneath the above-mentioned stone pillar, and just a few meters above the roadway. By "cleaning up", I mean that they've removed trees and vegetation surrounding a pile of loose rocks.

The purpose of their intervention is to install heavy metal netting over these rocks, to prevent them from moving. I asked one of the workers why it wouldn't be preferable to dislodge the rocks so that they slide down onto the road, where they could be broken into small fragments and carted away. He replied in a sarcastic tone by a single word: "business"... meaning that such-and-such a company stood to make money by installing the metal netting.

Local folk with whom I've spoken, including our mayor, are highly critical of any technique that consists of destroying the vegetation that has been stabilizing the rocky slopes for so long. To fix the netting in place, holes have to be drilled in the rocks [at the places marked with orange paint], then metal rods are hammered into these holes. But everybody knows that these metal rods erode over time, allowing moisture to seep into the rocks. When this moisture freezes abruptly, the subsequent forces can split the rocks and cause them to budge, increasing the probability of the netting giving way. In the perpetual combat of man versus rocky slopes, there's no obvious winner.

Destination death

Last Tuesday afternoon, I dropped in at the cemetery of Pont-en-Royans to bid adieu to 46-year-old Muriel Magnat (wife of Jean, the brother of Gérard), who was one of the first neighbors I encountered here at Gamone, fifteen years ago. At one stage, I employed Muriel to clean up my house on a weekly basis, but she used to irritate me, whenever I made any specific request, by replying "Oui, chef", as if I were an army sergeant. So her role as my household employee didn't last for long. But we remained good friends... and I was saddened, over the last couple of years, to see Muriel slipping into a no-man's-land of social withdrawal, maybe exacerbated by alcohol.

The last time I ran into her, a couple of months ago, at the supermarket in Saint-Jean-en-Royans, Muriel looked like a very old woman. She invited me back to her place for a pastis. In the course of our conversation, we got around to envisaging the possibility that I might inherit their cat, because it appeared that her husband Jean hoped to replace this animal by a dog. Retrospectively, I believe that Muriel was in no position to offer the family cat to anybody at all, but she was the kind of woman whose friendly direct speech seemed to announce such possibilities as if they were certainties. That was part of Muriel's charm, you might say. Back at the time she worked for me, Muriel was immensely proud of their ancient house in the Rue du Merle, on the slopes of Pont-en-Royans. But drunken carelessness meant that a good part of the neighborhood disappeared in flames... and Muriel, the likely culprit, disappeared instantly, like the burnt buildings, from the daily village scene.

Muriel Faure was a descendant, through her mother, of the Bonnard family whose prestigious hotel, inaugurated in 1898 (still standing, but converted recently into private premises), used to be a touristic landmark at Pont-en-Royans. Once upon a time, the noble descendants of the ancient Bérenger-Sassenage families used to be lodged there... not to mention the king of Belgium along with countless New World visitors.

On the tombstone above the sepulcher where Muriel was buried, I was intrigued by an engraved name, with no date of death: Tintin Faure. Afterwards, I asked my neighbor Madeleine Repellin (an erudite aficionado—in modern terms, a database—of local births, deaths, marriages, divorces, funerals and sordid stories of all kinds) to tell me the relationship between this mysterious Tintin and the deceased woman who had entered his tombstone universe.

Madeleine: "Tintin—that's to say, the nickname for Augustin—is Muriel's father."

William: "Hang on, Madeleine. The other day, you introduced me to an old man, supposed to be Muriel's father, alongside his daughter's grave. Now you're telling me that it's his name that's inscribed on the tombstone above his daughter's grave."

Madeleine: "Right. Tintin has inscribed his name on his future tomb, without a date of death, but his daughter happened to die before him."

William: "I'm amazed. Is it normal for living people to have their names inscribed on tombstones?" I was suddenly reminded of ferry boats in Sydney Harbor that carry the names of still-living sporting heroes such as Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould.

I sensed that the subject was becoming serious, and that my questions were disturbing. My everyday neighbor Dédé Repellin—Dédé is the nickname for André—intervened in our discussion: "Yes, it's a common habit in this part of the Alps. Inscribing a name on a future tombstone provides us with a precise destination. While still living, we know where we're finally heading."

Talk about serious mountain guides!

Law of motion

The First Law of Motion of Isaac Newton seems to concern moving objects: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. In fact, it applies perfectly well to an object whose velocity happens to be zero; that's to say, a stationary object. In other words, as long as no external force is applied to a stationary object, it will remain eternally motionless. Now, I often encounter intelligent individuals who seem to be convinced that, if an ancient structure has never yet fallen, in spite of its superficially unstable appearance, then this "proves" that it isn't likely to fall in the foreseeable future. They refuse to imagine that even the legendary butterfly, flapping its wings, could provide an external force capable of making things move.

A decade ago, my English friend Adrian Lyons was leading me on an inspection of a local dilapidated medieval castle, and he tried to reassure me when he saw that I wasn't too keen on crawling over rotted rafters: "This place was built centuries before we were born, and it'll still be standing long after us." Shortly after that outing, daredevil Adrian lost his life in the UK when he crashed his veteran jet aircraft while pulling out of a tight turn too close to the ground.

Here in the Vercors, many folk seem to consider that a precarious rock structure that hasn't yet crumbled and rolled down the slopes will no doubt remain in place forever. So, they don't sense its presence as a constant menace.

I see these cliffs, on the other side of the Bourne, from my bedroom window. In the center of the photo, the detached vertical pillar is most impressive when you look up at it from the Rouillard Bridge, a few hundred meters down from Gamone. It's composed of two sections, separated by a fissure, and the righthand section appears to be leaning down towards the road to Pont-en-Royans. If ever these rocks were to fall, they might not hurt anybody [because the zone is devoid of houses], but they would create a huge mess at the level of the road and the river.

I've often wondered whether specialists inspect such situations, to evaluate possible risks. I don't think so, because I have no idea how such an inspection could be carried out. After all, limestone cliffs of this kind are so crumbly that you wouldn't even find experienced rock climbers in such a place. So, we're left with the subjective appreciations of local folk who, for one reason or another, have their personal ideas about whether such-and-such a site is risky.

My neighbor Gérard Magnat, at Sirouza, lives quite close to this double pillar. From his balcony veranda, you look straight across at Mont Baret, and his house is located at roughly the same altitude as the pillar. When I called in at his place a few days ago, Gérard said to me, spontaneously: "For the last few months, I've had a strange feeling that the fissure between the two vertical sections of the pillar has widened a little. But I can't be certain, and people think I'm crazy..."

Fragile existence

A few hours ago, I drove down to the village of Pont-en-Royans to drop in on my local physician, Dr Xavier Limouzin. He was as proud as a successful angler to have guided me wisely, over a period of several years, into an expert medical context in which early traces of prostate cancer have been detected. At a practical level, this means that I'll no doubt endure an operation in the near future. My youthful mustached doctor (a distinguished member of the local fire brigade, and an amateur of antiquated motor cycles) leaned back in his armchair and allowed himself to be carried away by the apparent beauty of such a surgical intervention: "It's an amazing two-man team effort. The urologist operates with a colleague. They showed me a fabulous video that demonstrates how it's done." In watching Dr Limouzin describe with enthusiasm the work of his specialized colleagues, I had the impression that I was maybe missing out on some kind of superb Spielberg production, and that I should order immediately the DVD through Amazon. "The only access they need is a tiny set of holes in the lower abdomen. Once they've got their tiny instruments inside, in the prostate region, it's beautiful to see the way they operate, as a team." OK, we're surely talking about a couple of Olympic ice artists such as Torvill and Dean, or maybe a Russian/American pair of astronauts repairing their space station. Maybe, I thought, this expert couple fiddling around so aesthetically in the region of my old-fashioned sexual apparatus might be attempting to create an artificial offspring, possibly a monster.

After bidding farewell to my adorable doctor, I was halted by a minor catastrophe at the exit of the village of Pont-en-Royans, on the road up to Gamone.

While I was chatting about prostate surgery with Dr Limouzin, a giant rock had fallen down from the Baret mountain (which I observe from my bedroom window). After the impact, which would have surely squashed any automobile that happened to be moving up the road at that instant, the rock disintegrated into several fragments, one of which halted on the other side of the road, while the others jumped over the parapet and descended into the Bourne. As my friend Natacha put it, with what I see as a Marseilles sense of judgment, when I told her this anecdote on the phone: "Obviously, for God, your hour of doom has not yet come." Thanks Natacha, thanks God.

Seriously, life is fragile. Isn't it? Beautifully fragile. That's what makes the whole thing so amazing... whichever way you look at it. Meanwhile, if I were serious, I would start to think about looking at things from the point of view of those two surgical artists whose skill consists of being able to eliminate the bugs and other cellular intruders in my lower belly.

Shit, when I think about it, if Limouzin's conversation had bored me, and I had left five minutes earlier, my fucking prostate might now me some kind of French pâté spread out over the macadam on the road from Pont-en-Royans up to Gamone.

I love life! It's so unpredictable. Lively, as they say.

Blind corner

I've often said that this corner in the main street of the village of Pont-en-Royans, near the Picard bridge, is one of the worst I've ever seen in an urban context in France.

At the bend, there's only room for a single vehicle. But, up until you reach the corner, you have no idea whether another vehicle is approaching in the opposite direction.

All sorts of trucks and buses use this street constantly. And, if you find yourself face-to-face with a big fellow like this, the only way out is to reverse, often over a distance of twenty or thirty meters... provided that you're not being followed by a line of vehicles.

Fortunately, a solution is in sight. This old building is about to be sacrificed. Work started yesterday on the demolition. Drivers will then be able to see approaching vehicles.

Romantic table

Romantic table. My daughter used this expression, a few days ago, when she saw this photo. The top is a heavy plaque of white marble with traces of gray. The support is black forged iron and steel.

In a previous post, I mentioned a friend who's trying to sell his former restaurant in Pont-en-Royans. [Click here to see this post.] His name is Eric. After diluvian rainfall, Eric's former restaurant is a wreck, but there are still enough resources left to serve me up a green Chartreuse liquor (on the rocks) whenever I drop in. I love to sit on the upper balcony of Eric's dilapidated place, of a late afternoon, and contemplate the hanging houses. Periodically, a tiny flock of ducks flies down from the Vercors to their habitat on the Bourne at Pont-en-Royans. They swoop past Eric's place in a gracious curve, like jet fighters at an air show. They give me the impression that they know I admire their aeronautics. They're surely doing their act for me and my dog Sophia.

My romantic table is in fact a gift from Eric, who's getting rid of his former restaurant equipment. The lawn in front of Gamone is henceforth adorned with two such lovely white marble romantic tables.

Thirst

In an earlier blog, named Geography lesson, I evoked the Picard bridge at Pont-en-Royans. [Click here to display this earlier message.] At the Vercors end of the bridge, there's a charming bar-restaurant named the Picard, which I've been patronizing ever since I settled at Choranche. The proprietor, Jean-Noel, has been a friend of mine for years. A few months ago, Jean-Noel purchased an adjoining café, which means that the new Picard has doubled in size, as you can see here:

When I went in there recently, after taking my dog for a sunny walk alongside the Bourne, the girl behind the bar offered a big bowl of cool water to Sophia, who lapped it up enthusiastically, as if she were dying of thirst. The truth of the matter, I believe, is that my dog simply takes pleasure in discovering that friendly people in such places don't forget her. When we were moving around Provence recently with Natacha and Alain, they would have on hand, in the back of their automobile, a supply of water for Sophia. And it was a joy to see the dog downing water enthusiastically at every stop in our excursion.

It sounds silly to say so, but I find it's in fact a great joy for human observers to give water to a thirsty dog. It's one of those simple moments when you know you're doing the right thing. And it's so much better when the dog actually reveals that he/she was truly thirsty.

Plants, too, can behave similarly. In my message called Gifts from Provence, I showed a photo of a tiny fig tree that Natacha and Alain gave me. [Click here to display this earlier message.] Well, it downs water like a thirsty dog. Sometimes I notice that its leaves are drooping, and I rush to quench its thirst. Half an hour later, the tree is beaming with new-found vigor.

Strangely, my donkeys don't seem to have any particular desire to drink water. For years, whenever I've left a tub of water in Moshé's paddock, he immediately strives to turn it upside-down. I gather that the donkeys get the liquid they need through the huge quantities of grass and weeds that they're eating constantly.

Geography lesson

In this blog, I often refer to the nearby village of Pont-en-Royans, which is famous for its houses clinging to the vertical cliff above the River Bourne. The French word pont means "bridge". So, the name of the village means "Royans bridge", where Royans is the region in which we are located.

In this photo, you see the old stone bridge, called the Pont Picard, high above the waters of the Bourne. For centuries, this bridge was one of the rare access points between the Isère valley (to the left in the photo, a dozen kilometers below the village) and the rugged Vercors mountains, which start as soon as you cross over the bridge. If you stand on the bridge and look upstream, you see the chilly waters of the Bourne tumbling down from the Vercors range.

Towards the top of this photo, there's a rocky plateau. My property, Gamone, is located on the lower slopes of that mountain.

Exponential movement

Without wishing to transform my blog into a commercial affair (an unlikely predicament), I would be glad if readers of this post were to take a look at the real estate proposition in Pont-en-Royans that I've recently advertised. It's for a friend. [Click here to display this affair.]

Naturally, your readership would automatically kick up the Google rating, making the website more effective. Having said this, I advise interested would-be purchasers to phone me to obtain the hard facts. It's cheap, but the affair is also a little messy. To put it bluntly, the business was almost swept away, a few years ago, by a tremendous mountain storm. And almost everything in the restaurant needs to be redone, rebuilt, rethought... But it's an amazing site.

My blog statistics are augmenting exponentially, which is great.

It would be lovely, of course, if readers were to send in comments and maybe even reveal their identities... but that's asking for too much. So, thanks for looking in!

Half the local Aussie population is leaving!

Sheridan Henty arrived in Pont-en-Royans in May 2003, having purchased a huge village house on the banks of the Bourne that was rebuilt in 1955 after the Nazi bombing of 21 July 1944. The original owner was a maquisard named Hugues Reynaud du Charmeil, killed in the bombardment.

When I first met up with Sheridan (an inevitable encounter in an environment where we were the only two Australians), I was amazed to learn that she was the sole descendant of the famous Henty brothers who left England on the barque Caroline and reached the Swan River, Western Australia, on 12 October 1829. [I remember that date because my brother Don was born on 12 October 1941, and our father died on 12 October 1978.] This tiny fuzzy drawing, executed by James Henty, shows the Caroline anchored off Rottnest Island:

Shortly after Sheridan's arrival, I learned by chance that my ancestor Charles Walker [1807-1860] had reached Sydney on that same ship, working as a steward, on 6 August 1833. So, there we were in Pont-en-Royans, two shipwrecked Aussies whose ancestors had reached the New World on the same vessel.

Unfortunately, Sheridan has discovered that she cannot carry on living in Pont-en-Royans, so she has sold her house and will be moving back to Paris in the next few days. Yesterday, there was a delightful farewell luncheon for Sheridan in an excellent village restaurant.


Meanwhile, Sheridan Henty has given me officially the task of obtaining a valuation of her mysterious and magnificent ceramic plaque of a youthful Victoria. [Click here to visit my website.]

Back at school in South Grafton, we children learned that the Hentys couldn't stay for long in Western Australia because their English animals, brought out on the Caroline, ate poisonous weeds and died. So they left for what would later become the city of Melbourne, and they got involved in Tasmanian whaling. Here in the Royans, there are no poisonous weeds, but Sheridan is leaving us all the same. When a Henty moves, there might be great changes, as in the old radio saga of When a girl marries. In any case, whales in the Seine should be warned of impending danger.

Quarry fears

In the valley below my property, alongside the road that runs down to the village of Pont-en-Royans, there's a small stone quarry that went into action in 1973. The extracted material, used mainly for roadside walls and parapets, is known locally as Gamone bluestone.

Two years ago, when their current permit ended, the owners indicated—with the help of a huge technical dossier—that they would like to double the size and output of the quarry, and the authorities launched a public inquiry. I played an active role—along with environmental associations, neighboring municipalities and fellow citizens—in pointing out the negative aspects of this project, which was finally knocked back by the authorities.

A few days ago, I learned that the owners are making a new attempt to obtain a permit to reopen their quarry, based upon lower production figures. For the moment, I don't know whether or not they're likely to succeed. To be perfectly truthful, the pursuit of quarrying operations would not trouble me personally, because the site is a fair distance from my house. On the other hand, the residents of Pont-en-Royans would suffer greatly from the surge of trucks moving through their already-congested main street. And this traffic could have a negative effect upon tourism.

This time however, since there is no public inquiry, we citizens shall not be able to protest. I'm not the only observer who fears that the reopening of the quarry could culminate in a pedestrian getting crushed by a lorry full of Gamone bluestone in the narrow main street of Pont-en-Royans, maybe at the dangerous intersection of the ancient Picard bridge. It's a highly plausible scenario. But powerful people make a lot of money by blowing up mountains and selling top-quality stone. No theoretical accident scenario, no matter how high its probability, is going to discourage them.

My daughter at Gamone

I picked up Emmanuelle in Valence (exceptionally, the train from Paris stopped at the old station in the middle of the city) on Wednesday at the beginning of the afternoon. Half an hour later, we were at Gamone, where Manya was looking forward to a couple of relaxed days, away from her busy life as a journalist at Télérama in Paris.

Manya knows how to maximize opportunities for relaxing in an intelligent fashion. Most people would imagine that a computer is for working, a bed for sleeping and that, if you’ve just had a shower and washed your hair, then you might walk around in the sun to dry it. For Manya, operations of this kind can be combined efficiently and pleasantly.

She was amused to see me fiddling around with my recently-purchased machines for making coffee, bread and toasted sandwiches. I realize that I’m like a child with new toys. As my friend O said on the phone the other day, after hearing me describe these new kitchen gadgets: “William, you’ve gone all take-away.” And O, hearing me talk about home-made bread (a tradition at Gamone) and toasted chicken sandwiches (a suggestion picked up during my recent trip to Australia), seemed to be a little disturbed at the idea that I might have abandoned good old-fashioned French cooking of the high-cholesterol kind... which is a fact.

Besides talking in front of the fireplace, my daughter and I went out for several walks, including a climb above Pont-en-Royans to visit the medieval ruins I spoke about in an earlier blog. There are no crowds in this corner of the world. The first morning, my neighbor Dédé dropped in to say hello at breakfast time, but he was the only person other than me that Manya saw during her two days here.

The calm is conducive to relaxation and clear thinking. I believe that Gamone has always been reputed as a good place for a mind-cleansing spell. Manya knows that, here at Gamone, she can wash more than her hair.

When is a castle not a castle?

One would imagine that medieval history is a sufficiently serious domain of research to exclude the survival of spurious legends, particularly when it’s relatively easy to demonstrate their falsity. In the nearby medieval village of Pont-en-Royans, on the contrary, a legend concerning the existence of one or more local castles still persists, in spite of clear historical evidence (not to mention topographical realities) demonstrating that this legend is false.

I believe that the origin of this legend is the following drawing by Diodore Rouhault [1819-1874]:










This drawing is titled Pont-en-Royans, le château [the castle], and it certainly seems to depict the ruins of a castle on top of a peak, with a second construction on a lower neighboring hilltop. What’s more, the Napoleonic cadastre of Choranche dated 1832 [which can be examined in my French-language website at http://choranche.free.fr] indicates that the nearby mountain on which these ruins are located—a border zone between the communes of Pont-en-Royans and Choranche—was named Les trois châteaux [the three castles].

Today, fragments of ruins can still be found up there, but they are far less conspicuous than when Rouhault did his drawing, in the 19th century. Tourists who wander up there are surprised by the idea that medieval castles might have once existed up on the crags of rock above Pont-en-Royans.

The explanation for this diehard legend about one or more castles at Pont-en-Royans is simple, but few people seem to know it, or even want to hear it (for reasons I can’t understand). At no point in the medieval history of the village was there ever a full-fledged castle up above Pont-en-Royans. The construction whose ruins we see up there was a fortress comprising a watch-tower enabling soldiers to look out over the vast plains beneath Pont-en-Royans. And what did they see from their watch tower? First and foremost, they saw three splendid medieval castles named La Bâtie, Rochechinard and Flandaines (which no longer exist today). In other words, the place where the watch tower existed was known as Three Castles, not because there were three medieval castles up there (a topographical impossibility), but because you could see three castles from that lookout. In fact, the wealthy proprietor of the first of these neighboring castles, the Lord of Sassenage, paid the soldiers up in the watch tower so that they might take action (along with their numerous companions) if ever they caught sight of an approaching enemy.

I find it amusing that a place should be named, not for what actually exists there, but for what you can see from that spot, and that this naming quirk should confuse people for centuries on end.

There’s another more subtle reason behind the legend that a castle once existed at Pont-en-Royans. In French translations of medieval Latin documents, we find that Pont-en-Royans is designated as a château (castle). Consequently, many people have imagined, over the centuries, that this word was surely a reference to the castle(s) on the hill above the village. In fact, the word simply designated a walled village. So, medieval people who wrote about the local “castle” were simply referring to the walled village of Pont-en-Royans.

There are so many problems in the modern world that it’s almost relieving to turn one’s attention to medieval problems of this kind. Some observers would consider, of course, that I am bringing up questions of the same Byzantine kind as the sex of angels, or the number of these winged beasts that can be assembled on the tip of a pin. OK, maybe I’m getting carried away by the past. But what do I reply to summer tourists in the village, with their guide books open, who ask me: “Can you tell us where the medieval castles are located?”

Predecessors

If I were working on genealogy, I would speak of ancestors. If I were talking about olden days here at Choranche, I would use the French equivalent of an expression such as oldtimers or earlier generations. In general, I adore the word pioneers (which reminds me of 19th-century outback settlers in Australia), and I use it whenever possible to designate hard-working folk who have gone before us and paved the way for us. The generic term for all these people is, of course, predecessors.

A couple of years ago, my neighbor Madeleine lent me a small book about the history of Pont-en-Royans: the village a kilometer down the road from where I live. This book, published in 1961 (a year before I arrived in France), was written by a local schoolteacher named Sylviane Chaussamy. I was so interested in the contents of this history book, and impressed by the author’s enthusiasm about her native village, that I immediately scanned the 150 pages, printed out a copy for myself, and stored the files on a disk. And today, I’m proposing these files (in a PDF format) to interested people who visit my website about Pont-en-Royans.

While preparing these bulky files for downloading, I’ve been tremendously conscious of the fact that Sylviane, when she brought out her book (in her late fifties), was in fact assuming the role of a predecessor with respect to an unknown young man (me) on the other side of the planet, who could hardly read a word of French and who knew absolutely nothing about the magnificent Vercors region in south-east France and the village of Pont-en-Royans. Maybe, instead of designating Sylviane as a predecessor, it would be simpler to say that, in 1961 (when I was starting to think about the idea of maybe working one day in Paris with my current employer in Australia, IBM), I was about to fall into my role as a future successor—an inheritor as well as an admirer—of the devotion and research efforts of a French woman named Sylviane Chaussamy.

I have the impression that Sylviane’s book on Pont-en-Royans was, to a certain extent, a way of celebrating the life of her mother, Marie Ollivier-Pallud, who had been the headmistress in the same school at Pont-en-Royans where Sylviane started her career. In other words, Marie Ollivier-Pallud was not only Sylviane’s mother, but her vocational predecessor. On 29 June 1944, Marie Ollivier-Pallud was killed, along with eight others, in an absurd Nazi bombing raid on the village.

Today, in putting Sylviane’s book on the Internet, I have a profound feeling that I’m simply adding a few minor enhancements to my predecessor’s research and writing. In any case, there is a line of logical and necessary continuity between her work and mine, and I’m sure she would approve of what I’m doing.

Village life

I was spoiled by living for many years in the heart of Paris, in the Marais neighborhood. Among other things, I was incapable, say, of moving to a small village in rural France, where your neighbors are perpetually looking over your shoulder. One of the greatest things about life in a metropolis is anonymity. On the other hand, I welcomed the idea of settling here in the wilderness of Choranche, where my closest neighbors (Madeleine and Dédé) are out of sight. Sure, if I fell off a ladder and broke my neck, it’s likely that nobody would find me for a week or so, by which time there wouldn't be much left to find. But you only die once, whereas you have to live with prying neighbors for years on end.

This morning, exceptionally, I did some shopping in the nearby village of Pont-en-Royans. A spirit of agitation and excitement had invaded the main street, because everybody was aware that the Big Move would be taking place tomorrow. Big Move? Yes, the local grocer would be moving into slightly more spacious premises some fifty yards up the road. Events of that nature are rare in a village such as Pont-en-Royans. It’s like dismantling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and reassembling it down on the Place de la Concorde. To mark the forthcoming event, I decided to purchase a couple of cans of red beans in the old shop. My casual friend Chantal, too, was doing some last-minute shopping there. In her typical flamboyant style, she threw her arms around me and exclaimed:

“William, I haven’t seen you for ages. Where have you been hiding? Would you believe it: I’ve sold my café in St-Marcellin, and I’m now officially retired. I’m looking for a fifth husband, and I must inform you, William, that I’ve put you on the list of possibilities, with high priority.”

“Great, Chantal, let's call in on the priest,” I muttered, looking for words to express my dubious feelings about marrying this great blonde man-eater. Meanwhile, Chantal turned to the grocer, and asked:

“You know William, I suppose? He's one of our most interesting citizens.”

Before waiting for the grocer's reaction, I intervened by saying no: the grocer probably didn’t know me at all, because I rarely set foot in the village, since (as I said) I don’t particularly like village life. I’m a solitary being, like my dog, my donkey, my goat...

“Of course I know him,” replied the grocer. At that moment I was about to be stunned by a trivial anecdote that demonstrated how you can leave lasting impressions on people without ever realizing it. “Several years ago, William came down from the hills with his midget billy-goat, for the village fair at Pont-en-Royans. He led the goat by a cord, as if it were a dog. And the two of them strolled silently from one end of the street to the other and back. Then they disappeared back up into the hills. I’ll never forget that apparition of William and his goat in the main street of the village, like a couple of Martians.”

As for me, I had totally forgotten that, once upon a time, I used to go out walking (before the tourist traffic got too heavy) with my dog, my donkey and (more rarely) my goat.

As far as village life is concerned, another thing that disturbs me is that you often come upon weird people. You know what I mean: village folk. Strange backwoods individuals who wouldn't normally be at large in the relatively refined atmosphere of a civilized metropolis such as Paris. Like a guy walking a goat along the main street of the village...