The Knight of the ferruginous waters, Baron of Alzen

Up there on the plateaus of the County from where the water flows towards the Arize, herself flowing to the Kingdom, there, where the winters last for eight months, the Knight of the ferruginous waters, come out of the forest where he gathered wood for heating and trunks for building while fighting against the asperity of the earth out of sheer determination to produce potatos, beet and puny maize most often sacrificed, in the winter, to the fattening of the cows on the little family property, the Knight of Alzen, in the heart of his Barony, always fluctuated between the seductions of the Kingdom and the austerity of the County. Therefore he devoted himself first to the repair of the castle wagons whose delapidated axles pained at giving support, in the deeply rutted red earth, to the iron-rimmed wheels, as entrusted to him by William the Rutlaw, also called Rubens of Alzen, at the express request of the Countess (he was payed a few gold coins for this), before taking a wife in the Kingdom, in the Diocesan-city, secretly feudalizing certain empty-handed people of his, and this out of hatred for the action Nescus and Montels had brought against him, against him who drank the ferruginous water of the Grésalle (which was said to come from the Taulat), an action of which the enemy had “cackled” everywhere that it had been obtained with the support of the Masquerades of the prior of a neighbouring abbey and its nuns in want of Scarron comedy.

The Knight of Alzen had hence left behind the hamlets sprinkled on the hills of the County and the light-coloured cows pasturing in the green meadows around the little chapel, not without first constructing with his own hands a country squire’s house out of the best timber of the wood of Plamaroux, the King’s forest, leaving bad cuttings, brushwood and other rubbish to the coal-making peasants of the Smithies of the Arget in the Foix Consulate or the valley of la Barguillère, thus entirely depriving of the least little resource his Majesty’s carpenters who made, at little cost, the galleys for the use of the Forced Labourers of the Faith of Bourg-l’Asile
or the high-sided ships of glory of Louis the Divine, travelling the waves towards the dried-out shores of a Barbary indefinitely recommenced.

After the battle of Pavia, the Knight of Alzen, too, paid his obolus towards the ransom of the Sovereign, before opening a small shop (Papers and Hypocras) on the heights of the Castella, a few steps from the Cathedral, a boutique where the customers sometimes spoke to him about monastic inquisitors, diocesan bishops, if not the austere Cistercian
from Canté, near Sabardu, the future Benedict XII whom the heretics sotto voce called “Diabolus”, or the vicar of Vira, for whom torture was his daily bread : rack, strappado, boot and other amenities, among them the Wall, an alaman speciality ; or pilgrimages, flagellations, yellow felt crosses, tongues made from red cloth, marking out for public prosecution the bad-thinking or the ordinary sorcerers (ô Baruch !). The Knight of Alzen was little worried, let us say this, about these “carnival trappings” and was content to wait for the time of cherries (Le Temps des Cerises) and the return of his own healthy water treatment at Lamalou-les-Thermes where according to the mitred “losangiers” (traitor) of the Félibrige and the Bécassines of the CNRS convents, the father of the Petit Chose is said to have been treated incognito for an illness particularly well transmitted genetically...

But all these bikers of the Faith had not been able to alter the course of the Knight of Alzen who, from Orléans gate to the suburbs of Loumet, mercilessly whipped his mechanical horses, while superbly ignoring the salaams and the genuflexion gymnastics of the Bible verses, such as learnedly practised in the same Club “Mare Nostrum”, by the knights of the Cross as well as by those of the Crescent.

Thus, good year or bad, life went on, up to 14 september, date of the votive celebration of the Barony, accompanied by festivities to which the Knight of Alzen never omitted doing justice in order to find again, in the shadow of centenary elmtrees belonging to the Council and after some threshing the old way, scanned by the hickups of an ancient machine which he himself incessantly maintained in a state of service, the life-long friends, that is to say those of the County and those of the Kingdom, united in the same dust, those who made him such as he was and such as he will remain for those whom he helped, whom he loved and who, perhaps, returned it to him.

Notes

District of la Bastide de Sérou. (61 inhabitants ; 3kms ; 428m altitude).

Canté near Saverdun (Sabardu), 5kms from Toulouse where Jacques Fournier was born, Benedict XII, 1st pope of Avignon, who had the Palais des Papes built.

District of la Bastide de Sérou. (61 inhabitants ; 3kms ; 428m altitude).

Castella: Plateau of the Castella, (Pamiers) which has become parks and gardens and where the monument to Gabriel Fauré by Méric can be found at present.

Citation: “O Baruch! “Disciple of Jeremiah (prophesies) Cf: The book of Baruch-Text for paschal night. Baruch writes for the Jewish people exiled in Babylon. He urges everyone to pray and to always hope, he encourages the deported Jewish people to pursue in their worship of God as they did formerly in the temple of Jerusalem.

Cf: Racine to Jean de La Fontaine:”Have you read Baruch? “, an expression which has become famous.

Claude d’Esplas (Le Parcellaire)
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Translation : Dagmar Coward Kuschke (Tübingen)