IT DIDN’T TAKE ME LONG to find a much more plausible explanation than the one I had been offered as to the origin of my name. It started with a completely stupid question: if there was nothing in the official register of births, deaths and marriages as to when Auguste had died, even though he was twenty years old in 1869 – namely, one year prior to the declaration of war against Prussia – perhaps it was quite simply because he had gone to the front and there had met his end . . . In those days, men didn’t wear dog tags, and when they were killed and their bodies found, they would frisk them quickly to see if they had any papers on them that might identify them and then tipped them into a ditch with those from the opposite camp to avoid the spread of illness.

So, because I would have at least liked to know the history of the regiment in which he had been enlisted so I could imagine how his last hours had been spent, I began to dig around.

I didn’t even have to budge from home because the military enlistment registers from Seine-et-Oise – seeing he was from Saint-Germain-en-Laye – along with army number records, are all available on the internet from 1867 onwards for any genealogy fans. And do you know what I found under the de Rigny name? I’ll give you three guesses . . .

Auguste – a tall, skinny thing measuring 1 metre 77, with blond hair, brown eyes, a straight nose, high forehead and oval face – had been selected in the ballot of 18 January 1870 and was enlisted in the 28th line infantry regiment on 18 July, that is, on the eve of France’s declaration of war against Prussia. And then, in the space headed Decision of the Board and Reasons, below his personal information and physical description, there appeared the following note: Replaced by Monsieur Breval Botquelen, born 14 August 1845, kelp farmer, pursuant to the notarised deed drawn up on 16 July 1870 before Maître Hippolyte Marie de Kersauzon de Pennendreff, notary in Brest.

There it was! The missing piece of the puzzle!

Breval Botquelen.

A name from my part of the world, emerging from the depths of time like a piece of wood, swollen with water, that one day floats up from the deep.

Long ago, for my thesis, I had had reason to study Octave Mirbeau’s novel Sébastien Roch, and I was immediately reminded of this extract: