I don’t even know if he’s related to, or a descendent of, that V. from 1843. His is the only family with that name anywhere near Chichiliane.

I never could find out exactly what the one from 1843 was like. No one could tell me if he was tall or short. I imagine him with a beard, a bit like the beard of the young man reading Nerval, very brown, stiff, bristly, but somewhat sparse, and through which one can almost make out the shape of his chin. Not a nice beard, but a beard—I don’t quite know how to put it—a necessary, indispensable beard. Was he tall? Goodness, he might have been short but in that case he must have been stocky, and surely he had great physical strength.

I asked my friend Sazerat from Prébois about him. Sazerat has written four or five pamphlets about the regional history of this part of Trièves. In his personal library I found a big illustrated book about Cartouche and Mandrin and werewolves with their different snouts all portrayed in it (not a single canine is missing). There are portraits of two or three stranglers of shepherdesses and lots of documentation about someone named Brachet, a notary from Saint-Baudille who, they say, “stole from the till to please some grand-society dame,” but about my V. from 1843, nothing, not a word.

Nonetheless, Sazerat knows the story. Everyone knows it. You just have to bring it up yourself; otherwise no one will discuss it. Sazerat told me, “It’s a question of tact. He was considered deranged, crazy. We just try to keep the thing hushed up. We know enough about ourselves to be sure we won’t be stopping buses on the road from one day to the next, but not enough to be sure that, someday, we might not go too far. So it’s best not to talk about those things, best not to draw attention to them.”

I said, “Oh, please! You’re not telling me everything.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “What would I be hiding?”

Obviously. He’s a historian. He hides nothing; he interprets. What happened is more interesting. I think.

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