:01:52
The village was a village of the Bourbonnais.
:01:56
As this discrete Bourbonnais hadn't carved for itself a war name in history,
like Alsace or Lorraine,
:02:03
it was mistaken, for instance, for Burgundy
:02:07
just as, long ago, Piraeus (Greek port) was mistaken for a man,
:02:10
and my aunt's pendants for my uncle's.
:02:13
In short, the village was the worse for it.
:02:17
To put it bluntly, back on white,
:02:19
there was nothing left in the village, less than nothing.
:02:23
Or, rather, yes...
:02:24
There still survived, by hook or by crook,
:02:26
in the hamlet of Les Gourdiflots,
:02:29
two exotics, two fossils from the dawn of time,
:02:33
two pathetic creatures.
:02:36
The first of these Last of the Mohicans,
:02:38
of these tanned, wine-soaked dried fruits,
:02:42
of these curiosities from another time,
:02:45
rejected by technology and even the combustion engine,
:02:50
the first, then, of these two Druids of the wine goblet
:02:53
was called Francis Chérasse,
:02:56
nicknamed Le Bombé (the bulgy one)
:02:58
for the hunch that endowed his features.