Colombey-les-Deux Eglises, 14h30 - Le Petit Train d'Auteuil

De Gaulle, a great lover of televized pictures, appears on the screen in his turn as the guest of honour. The announcement of the event recalls the international sporting competitions (theme of the Eurovision, in the style of “come on, little ones!”). A certain commentator hails from the micro-review. Pictures of jubilant quaddies in the midst of helmeted first-aid workers who chatter next to st.cyrians whose plume trembles playfully in the wind of Lorraine. Outside the gate of the Boisserie policemen are keeping watch fiercely. “There is no hearse in Colombey”, announces the TV-reporter. And again, the same: “Everybody is here strictly anonymously.” In the church, the municipal council is . waiting, standing up,as are standing up the survivors of the 1012 “compagnons de la libération” (some six hundred roughly, three hundred of whom have come by special train)

A gaullist female ex-skier settles down among the faithful, some of whom are perched like old doves on dried out branches where they will lament unto death their companion whom they will see no more.

The two maids of the Boisserie are there. The BR (armoured vehicle) numbered 13 is beginning to move. Follows a DS preceding an R16 Renault: hierarchy is being respected. A helicopter, big fly on a mobile, is humming above the church.

“Outside, the sky has become threatening, whereas this morning it was brilliantly blue”, continues the commentator. This is like Macbeth. The clergy, “rotten” according to some, rattles off the blablabla vobiscum :
a machine-gun prelate with crew-cut and steel-rimmed spectacles officiates. The poor parish priest has given up his place to his ecclesiastical inspector. St Paul to Timothy seems to be the Gospel of the day. Malraux, no end of twitches (and non-admitted at the Boisserie!), is neighbour of a “big-ears” whinnying like any Houyhnhnm. Reference is made to Lazarus and his resurrection (St Lazarus ?). Quite a good arrangement of all the stage elements.

“Farinelli” begins to speak with the voice of a shepherd’s pipe, halfway between that of a man and that of a child: this is not the Dominican, the general’s cousin not yet promoted general. “We are ready for the Lord’s supper”, someone announces. The bishop takes a handkerchief out of his sleeve like a circus conjurer or a Pavarotti when on summer tour. Communion, only for the faithful inside the church. The fellow with the Farinelli voice is none other than the priest on duty. Some spectators on the roof of a house have removed the tiles, and their heads appear like from a tank’s turret, all laughing and unaware that the camera is catching them with the telephoto lens.

The commentator grumbles confraternally about the press helicopters which, hardly arrived, are already making an infernal row.
16 h 10 : all is finished.
22 h 10 : According to the radio, people are walking up the Champs-Élysées in order to lay white roses on the paving of the Arc de Triomphe. Why, then, did these same people send their idol into the wilderness, following the referendum?

Editions SOUBIE 2003
12230 - L’HOSPITALET DU LARZAC - FRANCE