‘Parochialism, my friend, is nothing other than natural patriotism. I love my house, my town, and by extension my province because it still upholds the traditions of my village. In the same way I love the frontier and am happy to defend it should a neighbour encroach upon it, because my own house is threatened and because the frontier, though it may be unfamiliar ground to me, represents the path to my province. In other words I’m a Norman through and through. I might happen to have a grudge now against the Germans. I might want to get revenge on them. But I don’t actually hate them. I don’t loathe them as instinctively as I do the English, who are my real, my traditional enemy. It’s the English who set foot on the soil of my ancestors and raped and pillaged here from time immemorial. The aversion I have for those deceitful people is something given to me at birth by my father … Oh, by the way, here’s the statue of the general.’

‘Which general was that?’

‘General Blanmont, of course! We had to have a statue. We’re not called the Glorious of Gisors for nothing! So we found General Blanmont. Look over here.’

He dragged me towards the window of a bookshop in which fifteen or so volumes bound in yellow, black and red immediately drew the eye. The titles made me giggle. They read:

Gisors, its Past and its Future, by Monsieur X, member of several learned societies

The History of Gisors, by the Abbé A.

Gisors from Caesar’s Day to Our Own, by Monsieur B, proprietor

Gisors and District, by Dr C. D.

The Glories of Gisors, by some researcher or other.

‘My dear fellow,’ Marambot went on, ‘do you know not a year goes by, not one year without the publication of some new history of Gisors. We have some twenty-three altogether.’

‘And what exactly are these glories of Gisors?’ I asked.

‘Oh, there are so many! I couldn’t list them all. I’ll just tell you the main ones. First of all, we have General Blanmont, then the Baron Davillier, the famous ceramicist who went on expeditions to Spain and the Balearic Islands and brought back wonderful examples, collectors’ pieces of Hispano-Arabic pottery.7 In literature, we’ve got the late, great journalist Charles Brainne, and among those very much alive and kicking we have the eminent editor-in-chief of the Nouvelliste de Rouen, Charles Lapierre8 … and many, many more …’