The Passadoc Gazette - No 77

Announcement « Passadoc »
And then here's some worms...
We're talking a little, a lot... passionately!
The river of Valberg... A beautiful rabble... Frédéric Mistral and Pan-Perdu... July 9, 1944... The exceptional testimony of Paul Bertin... The history of lavender... The walls have ears... Lazarine Negro... The Abbey of Sylvanes... Claude Charles Pierquin de Gembloux... The marmotons of the year... 14 July!...
Photos from yesterday
The Library of Passadoc

... selected by Giselle Penat-Lorde and Christophe Kilou

François Abbe

Valberg River

'80s... Mrs. Clary was a shepherdess in Valberg.
How many shepherds remain in Valberg today better known for its skiing and hiking?
Who has memories, anecdotes?

I chose this portrait signed André Abbe to tell you about a project: Women of Provence. This is a photo exhibition for the « European Heritage Days »in Roquebrune-sur-Argens (Var). For two days we will travel throughout Provence, through these portraits.

This event is signed by both Abbe Photo Association and Passadoc

Jeanne Monin… 1980 :
– A picture of my goats? And what are you gonna do with that Andre Abbe?
Ah! Mrs. Clary... neither you nor he know yet, but in about forty years, you will be on the walls of « "Ubradou de la Fouant" »... You will be one of the « Women of Provence » To whom Passadoc will pay tribute... An exhibition that will tell the life of the shepherds, the bugadières, the peasants here... Don't worry, Mrs. Clary... You'll be in good company!

Claude Boyer

A beautiful rabble

Today in Comps on Artuby takes place the traditional cousinade of Ribainbelle.
I associate myself all the more willingly with this friendly party that, if last year I was invited as reporter Passadoc, since this year I have been on the family tree of the Bain family.

In fact, in making my genealogy, I have discovered since I had as an alderman Marguerite Bain born in Saint-Cézaire-sur-Siagne on 17 June 1727, where she died on 16 April 1789. She married Honoré Bertou in Mons on 4 May 1753.. She was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.
His great grandfather Honore was born in Comps around 1630, his grandfather Jean was born in Comps around 1660 and his father Laugier was born in Seillans on 26 December 1686. Myrmyr de Comps And so I'm cousins... a little far away agree... But we have common DNA...

Unfortunately, this year I will unfortunately not be able to go back, so I say to you that !

Myrmyr de Comps
– Thank you Claude! Our tree is 17 meters long and the names are very tight!

The saga « Ribainbelle » Hey!
1737, Louis XV "Bien Aimé" reigns over France. In Comps-sur-Artuby in the Var, at the gates of the gorges of Verdon, begins a family saga that still lasts today.

Click! The rest is on this page!

Frédéric Mistral and Pan-Perdu

One evening in October 1891, Frédéric Mistral returned home.
He crosses the road of a little black-haired dog running after him, partying him, then making a real circus number. Mistral hunts him with his stick and then continues on his way.

The next day, Mistral sees the dog who obviously followed him in front of his door and here he is again doing his circus! In short, Mistral ends up adopting him, baptizing him « Pan-Perdu » And a beautiful, beautiful friendship was born between the two! Wherever Mistral goes, the dog follows him! This friendship will last two years, until Pan-Perdu goes to the paradise of dogs leaving the poet very unhappy.

A few years before his death, Mistral drew up the plans for his mausoleum tomb! Besides, beautiful faces of Provencals and the felibrean star, the poet demanded that a grave sculptor on the stone of Pan-Perdu!

But listen to the most surprising!
Paul Roumel, who tells this story, tells that he was in the United States in the city of Buffalo Bill, where he visited the museum of the famous hunter and the dog was mentioned. Roumel notes that Buffalo Bill and Mistral look alike! He then asks questions about this circus dog, Pan-Perdu. He's doing research... and learn that Buffalo Bill came to Provence in 1889 with a circus! Baroncelli's Marquis Folco had invited Buffalo Bill into his manade after his tour. And there, Buffalo Bill, tells him he lost his circus dog in Tarascon!
Did Pan Perdu travel miles across the fields, on the roads to tie up with his lost master? The story may be romanticated but it is pretty.

Who's Buffalo Bill and who's Frédéric Mistral?

Philippe Natalini

9 July 1944

The following happened in Provence 78 years ago to the day...
The Germans are carrying out a relentless repressive campaign by tracking down resistance and guerrillas in the sector.

After the 14 shootings of Saint-Saturnin-les-Apt (the 1^and July 1944), the 8 shot from the plateau des Abeilles in Monieux (15 July), the Heinrich group of the 8th^e Brandenburg company, going on a mission to Lambesc (Bouches-du-Rhône) to make arrests, will forever mark the history of City Laure (Vaucluse).

At the beginning of the afternoon, 6 resistant people imprisoned in the cells of the Splendid Hotel in Cavaillon are brought to the entrance of Villelaure in a vineyard, not far from the river Mardéric.
Among the resistors are two inhabitants of Gordes, René Mino (the father) and Maurice Mino (the son) arrested two days earlier on denunciation. There are also two resistors of Cavaillon, Blaise Bounias and André Morlot, a Montfavet resistant, Armand Leardo, and a sixth resistant whose name remains unknown today.
All are immediately shot in these vineyards. Their bodies are discovered very quickly by the population who heard the multiple bursts of gun guns crackling.

These Nazi reprisals could be related to the sabotage of the Cavaillon-Pertuis railway bridge operated shortly before.

It should be noted that relatives of victims of these abuses of the occupant, including the New and Mino family, will later be in the platoon that will execute Cécile Biankowski alleged whistleblower of the maquis of Saint-Saturnin-d-Apt (14 September 1944 in Gordes – Vaucluse).

The exceptional testimony of Paul Bertin...

... on the conditions of his escape from Draguignan hospital on 14 July 1944, escape made possible by the coordination of resistance fighters FFI Varois, men of the maquis Vallier, Dr Angelin German and his nurses, including Hélène Vidal.
Reminder of the situation: Paul Bertin resists Saint-Maximin (83), is hospitalized because he tried to commit suicide at the local Gestapo so as not to speak under torture.

We begin, with friends of Draguignan, to prepare for the escape that took place on 14 July 1944 at 9 am. But since 8:00 a.m. the nurse warned me that I was out, that the Gestapo was coming back at 10:00 a.m. Eight to nine o'clock, oh! It's been a bad time! Having by miracle escaped death and going back into the hands of these people there, it was terrible.
I mean... There came a car... noises in the hallway... The door opened and four masked men, machine guns in their hands, exclaimed: « Bertin! Hurry! Hurry! »

(These four men were actually five. There were Jean Ramela, Maurice Michel de La Motte, François Carpinetty de Draguignan, Louis Casanova and Aiguière du maquis Vallier)

I run, naked, in the car... I saw the agents with their arms in the air. They were locked in my cell, and we left...
The Ponts et Chaussées car, which had not been driven for 8 or 9 months, had the fuel pipe crushed, and we remained in a breakdown at two hundred meters from the Gendarmerie. The driver dismantled the piping. Meanwhile, we were on guard, gun in the fist. I was happy to be armed; I was so sure the Gestapo couldn't take me back alive. At last the gas came, and we left.

A little before Flayosc, we arrived in front of a bridge that had a huge hole in the middle; After examination, we try to pass.
It was this bridge that had jumped that had saved us, because the Boches knew it, were slender in our pursuit on the three roads that were leaving Draguignan, full of gas; They were inspired by the refractories who blew up this bridge during the night.

After a puncture, a burst, we arrived at Aups. We were repaired, and we went to the FFI camp of Lieutenant Vallier at the edge of the Verdon, opposite Montpezat. There I was very well received by the lieutenant, by his men, and the camp commander whom the men called the boss, Mr. Picoche, member of the CDL du Var.

After a couple of weeks, I was much better and Mr. Picoche said: « Now that you're all right, it'll be a lot better if you're gonna end up on a farm, while here if you have to pick up, you can't do it... »
I left the camp, went through Varages, Saint Maximin, and a few days later I had joined my wife and son in the commune of La Destrousse. »

On August 20, 1944, Paul Bertin, accompanied by his family, returned to Saint Maximin. He is acclaimed by the public and the FFIs give him a hedge of honour. Two days later he was appointed chairman of the Liberation Committee with Father Robert de Bienassis as deputy.

Testimony from Alain Decanis' book, « The Resistance in Saint-Maximois Country« .

Giselle Penat-Lorde… and Philippe Levieux

The history of lavender

Lavender is a medicinal plant with several varieties: « lavandula stoechas » (butterfly) or « lavandula latifolia » or « lavandula spica » (aspic) « lavandula augustifolia » (true lavender or even fine lavender) and finds its roots in the Romans who used it as a perfume, but also for baths and laundry.

Throughout the Mediterranean region, the use of the plant is thus growing, with the number of « precious plants » by the Roman naturalists (cited in particular by Pliny the ancient). However, it is only in the Middle Ages that the term appears. « lavender », according to the Latin verb « lavare » which means washing. Its use was then linked to the fight against infectious diseases: perfume is associated with the therapeutic aspect, it has long been believed that bad odours spread diseases.

Photo: Internet – Senanque Abbey

Click! The rest is on this page.

Ferrasse lavender fields
a few kilometers from those of Aurel (Vaucluse).

Jean Philippe Tinois
– But these fields are beautiful! It is reported that those of Valensole were « disaster » This year.

Philippe Levieux
– We have to keep a certain measure anyway... There were some beautiful fields in Valensole on the D56 between Puimoisson and Valensole, and even sunflowers... On the other hand, the harvest began very early. The fields on the Entrevennes side were also worth the detour. The craze for the site does not deny itself and whole buses of tourists land every day... It is true that the Vaucluse and much less frequented, but for how long...

Jean Paul Tinois
– I know only the consequence; Actually, it's the little honey made by the bee colonies of a friend [that makes me say that]. There must probably be corners more or less well adapted, more or less rich in flowers.

The walls have ears...

Jeanne Monin
The expression dates from 1622. Historians tell that then, in these times of war*, being spied on is the fear of any strategist, any military ...
- Let's talk low... We could be heard... It's because our enemies are everywhere hidden... Maybe even there, behind that wall!

* Thirty Years' War

The walls can also have eyes! Thus, in « Britannicus » :
You are in places full of its power:
These very walls, Lord, can have eyes;
And never the emperor is absent from these places.

Closer to us, during the Second World War, the expression found a new life near the Resistants. It is better to keep quiet, avoid sharing words that some treacherous ears could bring back to the enemy.

Lazarine Negro

She was born in Manosque on June 25, 1848.
A strange life like Lazarine's... In 1886, at age 38, she began divorce proceedings two years after the adoption of the Naquet Act. She will be the first divorced woman in the department. Free, she leaves the Manosque from her heart to open a poultry and game shop in Marseille – with her sister.

At a time when freedom was a scandal, Lazarine gained her independence while women did not even have the right to have their own wages. A feminist even before the idea germinates, an activist of emancipation through his life choices, Lazarine gives emotion to the Occitan language. She wrote in newspapers and became impertinent friend of the provençal authors, from Mistral to Elzéard Rougier via Elémir Bourges. « It arouses wonder and respect« .

Click! In the footsteps of Lazarine Negro

Alain Cathala

Sylvanes Abbey

Founded in XII^e The Sylvanes Abbey is a high place of art, spirituality and culture in the territory of the Grand Causses Regional Natural Park.
Classified as a historical monument, it is one of the major sites of the Occitanie/Pyrénées/Mediterranean region; It is part of the European network of Cultural Centres of Encounter.

Nestled in the heart of Aveyron's wooded valleys, this Cistercian art jewel features exceptional acoustics that make it shine on the cultural and musical scene.

Claude-Charles Pierquin de Gembloux,
Dr. Montpellieran speaking to the Uistitis.

Dr Claude-Charles Pierquin de Gembloux, a funny bird, but also one of the glories of the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier today forgotten (perhaps not without reason).

This Brusselser, born after Christmas 1798, discovered Montpellier at the end of the first Empire, thanks to his father's appointment in our city as military intendant, and very young, from the age of 17, he began to make a name in military art, especially during the hundred days during which he opposed the royalist troops.
Faithful to the Emperor, he fought alongside General Gilly to defend the Citadel of Montpellier and his bravery was so praised that the general, as extraordinary commissioner, gave him the Legion of Honor.
But the installation of the Bourbons in 1815 prompted him to seek his salvation in other places, and found refuge in Valencia where he held the post of schoolmaster. It was not to mention that his boiling temperament could not be absorbed. He made it imprudent to write a song to the glory of the fallen Emperor and had to leave Valencia after a painful trial. It is then that he finds Montpellier, and that he goes, in curious spirit, as the scholars of his time could be, to study medicine.

Thanks to a remarkable erudition and a constant application to his studies, the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier awarded him a doctorate in 1821, at the age of 24. He's brilliant. He obtained the position of doctor of the hospices of the city. But in this profession, he bores himself and has no other goals than opening his own firm. He knows that his military past can harm him, and one night he makes the decision to leave Montpellier. He abandoned his friends, and the scientists from Montpellier with whom he had been very friendly, and after great kisses, took the road to Paris.

1830 arrived and there he was again on the barricades, ready to give his life for freedom... He is brave as much with the gun as with the dressings, and he is as brave... He emerged as a hero, and was appointed by the new government as a member of the Commission of Political Convicted Persons and obtained a title of inspector of academy in Grenoble and then in Bourges. His destiny could have been traced, except that in 1849, in the face of political unrest, he resigned to devote himself only to scientific tests that had earned him since 1830 to be appointed a member of some fifty of the most prestigious French or European scholarly societies.

His political life is one thing, his scientific life is another. This tireless scholar, with a brain never rested, produced at least 150 books on a wide variety of subjects. He takes part in the encyclopedias of his time.

One owes him an encyclopedia of madness, but what will remain his master work is his Animal idiomology, or Historical, anatomical, physiological, philological, and glossological research on the language of animals. In this book, it starts from the idea that men and animals originally spoke a common language and does not hesitate to [create] an ouistiti glossary that could be very useful to you if you go to the Lunaret Zoo... Here's something to hold a little conversation with these tree climbers:

ghriii: Come.
guenokiki — Terrible fear: alarm cry which is equivalent to fleeing, to fear strongly, to fear.
irouahhi — Violent and moral pain up to despair.
irouah-gno — I have terrible moral pain, save me, spare me.
krrreoeoe — Be happy, enjoy deep happiness, fulfilled.
keh — Being a little better, suffering less.
Kuic — Being upset, being upset, being embarrassed.
ococo — Deep terror.
oric — Protection, help.
quih — I'm missing something I really want, something I'm asking for.
quaked — To suffer with despair that one cannot escape physical or moral pain.
Sifflet — Boring, wanting to drink, eat, sun, pleasure, etc.

I thought it might be very useful to you, so I allowed myself to copy this excerpt from his glossary published on Wikipedia.

But among the other texts that deserve to be noted, there is also the Treaty on animal folly or its Essay on the art of producing madness at will.
The list did not stop there, it produced extensive archaeological studies, dictionaries of the Marquesas Islands, reflections on the sleep of plants, a political arithmetic, holy books, collections of gastronomy. Everything interested, until madness... A curious spirit which can be counted among the glories of the University and which died in Paris in 1863.

Text: Fabrice Bertrand

Illustration: Charles Claude Pierquin de Gembloux (1798-1863) by Auguste Legrand

The Canal du Midi

Connecting Toulouse to Sète, it is 240 km long, 2 m deep, 15 to 18 m wide in mirror (surface), and 10 m wide in the bottom.
It has many works of art: 65 locks, a tunnel (the Malpas tunnel), canal bridges, dams.
It was excavated by thousands of workers for fourteen years, from 1667 to 1681.
They were motivated because they had been offered to pay them even on holiday days, storm days, sick days, something rare in those years.
This site was one of the largest in the world at the time.

It is in the History of France the second channel; The first is the Briare canal, from the time of Henry IV but six times shorter. Before them, Emperor Augustus had thought about it, and the troops of a Roman general dug a canal of Arles at Port-de-Bouc in 102 C.E. (40 km).

So who designed the Canal du Midi?
It is Pierre Paul Riquet, a gabelou, a collector of the royal tax on salt, born in Béziers in 1609.
He will convince Colbert and Louis XIV to finance his project. He relies on the work of Thomas de Scorbiac and to power his Canal, he will capture the waters of the many rivers of the Black Mountain in an immense reservoir at the Saint-Ferréol dam, the largest artificial water reservoir in the world at that time.

Riquet died at 71 (October 01, 1680), eight months before the inauguration of the Canal Canal Royal de Languedoc in May 1681 and renamed Canal du Midi in 1789. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996.
– In Toulouse, we can continue on the Canal de Garonne (completed in 1831) and reach the Atlantic towards Bordeaux, all from Sète 700 km . It's the Canal of the two seas !
– In Sete we can continue on the Rhône Canal until Aigues Mortes and Beaucaire .
– Equipment and agricultural products are transported via these canals which have also developed river tourism.

Text: Isabel Galtier

**Pierre Paul Riquet by Bourdon – 1655**

Philippe Levieux

The marmotons of the year!

They left their burrow
and joyfully shoot in the meadow in search of flower stems!
Two or four in each litter, they are born blind and without hair.
They then measure 3 cm and weigh 30 g. They become self-sufficient after 8 weeks.

Jeanne Monin