14 juillet pictures

Yesterday was the 14th of July, the French national holiday. In France it's called le 14 juillet or la fête nationale. This year's celebrations were slightly subdued, because six French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan earlier in the week. It was a Bastille Day in mourning for many.

Tomatoes in the garden

Walt and I didn't do anything special for the holiday. We just stayed home, cooked lunch — a big "fry-up" as I hear the British call it; tempura is what we called it. Turnips/navets, mushrooms/champignons, summer squash/courgettes, and shrimp/crevettes lightly battered and deep-fried.

Tempura of vegetables and shrimp, followed by
a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad

That's not a kind of cooking we do very often, primarily because it makes such a big mess in the kitchen. It was good though, with a Japanese-style dipping sauce of shrimp broth, soy sauce, ginger, horseradish, and mirin (rice wine).

Grapes and grapevine leaves

In the afternoon, I went out for the regular walk with the dog and took some pictures (click the pictures to see them in a larger size). The afternoon weather was beautiful. The garden is soaking up a lot of sun right now, and it needs to hurry because the forecast this morning says we should expect a week of damp, autumnal weather starting tomorrow. We'll see if it actually rains in any significant way this time.

Two little prunelles, or sloes

Today we are headed to Le Grand-Pressigny to have lunch with Jean and Nick — they have a blog called A Very Grand Pressigny. We'll be able to sit out on the patio in the sun, I'm sure. We're taking a bottle of the champagne I bought in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ back in June as our contribution to our 15 juillet celebration. It's about an hour's drive there, and an hour back, so we have to be sages and not over-imbibe.

Wildflowers

Then we can look forward to a windy, wet weekend, they tell us. Bien sûr. Qui vivra verra.

Enjoying some time off

It's nice to have a few weeks off. That's what July has turned into. The garden is growing and hasn't needed much maintenance for a while. We've had no travel or visitors in July. The 2011 French Open tennis tournament is history, and we did our bit for the Tour de France cycling race. The weather has been fairly summery for 3½ months now. What more could you ask for?

Nobody talks about the drought any more, even though
it's still just as dry. I guess most of the spring crops
have been harvested now.

There are plenty of tasks that I ought to be tackling out in the garden and around the house, inside and out. Weeding. Scrubbing. Pruning. But I'm not motivated. That's okay. It's only July. It'll all wait until August. July 14 today, by the way. That's the French national holiday of course — Bastille Day. So I'm going to take another day off.

La rue des Laurendières in our neighborhood.
It's called a street — une rue — but it's not paved.

There are calls to make. We need to get the furnace — well, boiler, actually — serviced. Call Savelys, the company we have a maintenance and emergency repair service contract with. We need to have the chimney swept. Insurance requires that it be swept annually. Both these obligations remind me of winter. I don't want to think about it. Besides, you can't call any business people on Bastille Day.

For lunch, how about a nice lasagne of summer squash with
tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, and ewe's-milk cheese?

We have some more old friends from California coming in about a week to spend a few days. That's something to look forward to. We also have two trips planned now, for late August and early October. We've rented a gîte rural — a house out in the country — for each trip. We'll be traveling with old friends and seeing new countryside. Each trip will be only three or four days long. That's all the time we can take away from the cat and the garden. The dog will go with us.

And some garlic bread made with crushed garlic,
sweet butter, and chopped fresh rosemary?

The hard part of living this life here in Saint-Aignan is trying to keep a steady rhythm. To be busy but not too busy; idle but not too idle; productive but not too driven. To remember, when lazy, that the busy days will come again. The garden will produce tons of squash, eggplants, tomatoes, corn, and beans that will need to be processed and put up for the winter. It will rain again, someday, and the grass will grow. The hedge will get trimmed. The firewood will get sawed. The season will change. But not yet.

Oops, I just remembered that I do need to go do some watering this morning. And then cook lunch. Today is another day.

Video of the Tour at Orbigny

Okay, I know I've done a lot of posts about the Tour de France. Here's one more — just for the châteaux, really.

It's a short video of the Tour de France passing through the village of Orbigny, 7 or 8 miles south of Saint-Aignan. It starts with a clip showing the Château Le Mousseau, then shows the riders going through the countryside and past our vantage point, and finally shows a clip of the Château de L'Estang from the air.

Credit for the video goes to France 2 television.
No violation of copyright laws is intended,
vu que ce blog est purement non-commercial et sans but lucratif.

It's a little less than five minutes of video. The best way to watch it is to click the "Watch on YouTube" button on the control bar under the clip. Or click here. At kilometer 64.7 — watch the countdown on the screen — you can see me, Walt, and our friends by the side of the road, watching the cyclists speed by and taking pictures. The châteaux are a lot more interesting — truth be told.

Greek-style chicken

Greek-style, applied to food, usually means marinated, cooked, or served in olive oil and lemon juice. That's how this chicken is marinated and cooked. I made it with wings, but you could also use other chicken parts or a whole chicken cut into serving pieces.

Wings marinated and spread out on parchment paper for baking...

Since we found that would could buy chicken wings at the supermarket for a good price a couple of years ago, we've cooked them in many ways and styles — Buffalo, Yakitori, Tandoori, Vietnamese, and so on. They've all been good. I've noticed that some of the poultry vendors in the markets around Saint-Aignan have started selling wings, either raw (usually in a marinade) or already cooked.

...and after cooking for about 40 minutes in a medium oven

Twice, recently, I've marinated and cooked wings or other chicken parts Greek-style. The last time was last Friday for our Tour de France potluck picnic — which we ended up having to have indoors — and they were about the best. Here's the recipe.

Greek-style Chicken

½ cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1 tsp. hot red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
3 or 4 lbs. chicken parts

In a glass dish, mix the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, hot red pepper flakes, lemon juice, and half a dozen strips of lemon zest. If you use dried herbs, just use a teaspoon of each. Place the chicken pieces in the mixture, toss, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.

Cook the chicken on a grill or in the oven at 180ºC/350ºF for 30 or as long as 60 minutes, basting it with the leftover marinade frequently. The cooking time will vary according to the size of the chicken pieces you are cooking.

If you cook the chicken in the oven, you can save the lemony, herby cooking liquid or oil. Strain the it and use it to season cooked vegetables or fry potatoes in it, for example.

Too many wings, but the leftovers will be good

If you make extra wings, the way I did, you can keep them in the refrigerator and easily reheat them in the oven or even in the microwave before you serve them. Eat them with your fingers, of course. I wouldn't advise trying to eat them with a knife and fork.

Chicken wings for a picnic

If you cook a whole cut-up chicken, or legs or thighs, you can serve them as part of a more traditional meal, with knives and forks. That's what I would do in France, at least with people "of a certain age" like me. It's not very French to pick up foods with your fingers, except bread and apéritif snacks like potato chips and slices of saucisson sec.

P.S. It's raining this morning, with lightning and thunder. Let's hope it rains all day, and all day tomorrow.

Making bagels

What do you think of when you have a package of smoked salmon and a tub of fromage à tartiner — spreadable or "cream" cheese — in the refrigerator? Bagels, that's what. Problem is, you can't get bagels here in Saint-Aignan, or at least not that I know of. In Paris, yes, but not here. Not even commercially baked or frozen bagels.

We can get many different breads, of course, either in one of the area's six or seven boulangeries, or at the supermarket, but not bagels. Normally, we get our bread delivered by the porteuse de pain — the bread-delivery woman — four days a week, but starting yesterday she officially went on vacation for two weeks. We are on our own.

Shaping bagels out of bread dough

That means we get to sample the breads from all the other bakeries around here, which will be an interesting change from our simple daily baguette made by the village boulanger. But it also means we have to drive three to five miles, round-trip, just to buy fresh bread, unless we need to go out for other reasons. There's another option, of course: make bread at home.

What makes them bagels is the boiling before baking technique.

Walt did that yesterday. He made bagels — "water bagels," to be precise. Bagels are made using a yeast-risen bread dough that is shaped into the familiar fat rings, left to rise, and then boiled in water for a few minutes before getting their final cooking and browning in the oven.

Here's the recipe, in case you want to try it:

Water Bagels
Makes 12 bagels

2¼ teaspoons (8 g) active dry yeast
1½ cups (12 fl. oz.) warm water
2 Tbsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
4¼ cups (530 g) all-purpose flour
4 liters water
1 Tbsp. honey

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a large bowl. Add the sugar, salt, and flour, and stir to form a soft dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead until it is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Cover the dough with a lint-free towel and allow to rise for 15 minutes.

Flatten the dough, then roll it out to a thickness of one inch, and about 12 inches long and 6 inches wide. Cut it into strips 12 inches long and one inch wide. Roll each strip between your hands into a cylinder about one-half inch thick.

Cut each cylinder in half crosswise, form each half into a ring, and pinch the ends together to form closed circles. Cover the bagels with the towel and allow to rise for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the water to a boil in a large pot and preheat the oven to 375 deg F. Add the honey to the boiling water, and drop in the bagels. Reduce the heat and simmer for seven minutes, turning them over about half-way through. They will float and puff up in the water.

Remove the bagels, drain well, and place on baking sheets. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

There are many variations possible. You can sprinkle sesame seeds, onion seeds, finely chopped onion or garlic, or some coarse salt on the boiled bagels before putting them in the oven. You can add some cinnamon and some raisins to the dough before shaping and boiling the bagels.

Slice open the finished bagels and toast the halves (or not, as you wish). Spread with cream cheese. Lay on a slice of smoked salmon and maybe a couple of thin slices of cucumber. Good for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, or a late-night snack.

Here's a post from three years ago about making bagels...

There we were, spectating

I wonder if any of you ever managed to see us — me really, because I'm the most visible of the two of us on the screen — standing out there on the side of the road watching the Tour de France go by. The picture is below. I know it's me in the picture, anyway, and Walt does. You probably wouldn't recognize me, even if we are old friends, as some us are.

A still captured from TV video — I added the labels.

Click the picture to enlarge it.

One reason to watch the TV coverage of the Tour de France is to see the aerial photography or video of the villages, towns, churches, and châteaux along the route. Not to mention the fields of sunflowers, the rivers, and the beautiful countryside in general. I recorded and have made a DVD of the coverage in our area, including segments on the castles at Chaumont-sur-Loire, Montrichard, Chisseaux, Chenonceau, and Montpoupon, and our neighboring villages to the south called Orbigny and Nouans-les-Fontaines.

This is the Château de l'Estang, near Orbigny and very near
the place where we set up to watch the Tour de France go by.
The château is privately owned and not open to the public.

I was hoping for a rainy weekend, but the forecast was wrong. It was dry and windy yesterday morning, and dry and less windy yesterday afternoon. I need to go out and water the garden. Yesterday was a lazy day. About all I did was, in the afternoon, make a batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies, because I was hungry.

Cars sponsored by a fruit syrup manufacturer
in the Tour de France "caravan"

Oh yeah, and I worked on the video all day. It's frustrating, because the quality of stills you capture from video are in no way a match for the stills that come out of my little digital camera. And posting video is a lot of trouble for the result you get. I'll keep working on it, but I'm not optimistic about getting anything of good quality posted.

Gentils gendarmes and kooky cookies
in the Tour de France caravan

At 7:30 this Sunday morning, we are getting a few drops of rain. Let's hope it lasts. Walt just came back from a walk with the dog, and said we'll have more summer squash to harvest this week, and reported that the tomatoes are "going crazy out there." We are moving into the heart of the summer season.

Tour de France: La caravane et le peloton

The day turned out to be cloudy and windy. We got to our friends' house out in the country south of Saint-Aignan at about 11 a.m. Already, cars were parked all along the side of the road, in every little lane and even in the fields, recently harvested. There were also camping trailers and RVs with people sitting around tables alongside, drinking wine and eating lunch by the side of the road.

At one point, our friend who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, said maybe he would recreate the scene when he got back home: he could sit out on the side of San Pablo Avenue in a folding chair, drink wine, applaud, and yell at the cars and drivers that passed. We all had a good laugh thinking about that image.

This was our view up the road, on a big curve
through a wooded area.

We first had lunch inside, up at the house, since it was windy and even cool outdoors. During our lunch around the kitchen table, we noticed that it had started raining outside. Then it started raining even harder, really coming down. But no worry, the shower lasted only about three minutes. Then the sun came out, off and on, for the rest of the day. We didn't get washed out, though we debated the need to take umbrellas and raincoats with us when we walked down to the road.

These cars decorated with baguettes de pain
were part of the caravane.

Down at the end of our friends' road, about 300 meters/yards, two or three cars were parked and 12 or 15 people waited for the main event. We joined them at about two o'clock, when what they call the caravane was scheduled to pass by. The "caravan" is made up of a lot of support vehicles, police cars and vans, press cars, and a lot of decorated, brightly painted cars and trucks that the sponsors of the Tour send out to advertise their products.

These are old Citroën 2CV's advertising the French
hard sausages called saucissons secs, eated with apéritifs.

When the sponsors' cars go by, they throw out what we came to call, affectionately, "crap." Key chains, hats, cookie and saucisson samples (in cellophane bags), and so on. At one point one of the tchotchkes landed on the edge of the road, and when Walt went to pick it up our gendarme yelled at him to be careful not to get run over. During all this, Callie, on a leash, just sat and watched calmly. She didn't bark, she didn't seem afraid, and she was generally on her best behavior.

Here come the riders, with their motorcycle escort.

Yes, we had our own gendarme — a tall, skinny young guy who told us he was assigned to the Tour de France for a week. He was stationed at the end of our friends' gravel road, on a big curve in the paved lane that was the Tour de France route. He made sure no cars came down the gravel road (there were maybe two or three that arrived from somewhere over the course of the afternoon), directed traffic when for some reason a traffic jam developed during the passing of the caravan, and chatted with us spectators.

The whir of the spokes and the whine of tires on pavement
as the peloton sped past were memorable sounds.

The pack of cyclists, the peloton, finally showed up at about 4:30, an hour late because of the strong headwind they had to ride into all day. We had plenty of time between the caravan parade and the bicycle race to walk back up to the house for bathroom visits and to get another bottle of wine and some snack foods. The rain held off, with just a couple of very moments of light drizzle, and then the sun came out brightly and quickly warmed things up by 4:00 or so.

And then it was over in the blink of an eye...

When we saw helicopters on the horizon to the west, we knew the cyclists were approaching. I went over and stepped down into a ditch along the side of the road — remember, with the drought everything is powder-dry — so that I could get some good shots of the approaching riders at pavement level. It worked, but the race passed by so fast that my little camera wasn't really up to the task. I did snap a few shots, as you see here.

A portrait of "our" gendarme doing his job

When Walt and I go home, we scanned through the TV coverage of the day. We saw videos of some of the region's famous châteaux, as we had hoped — Amboise, Montrichard, Chenonceau, Montpoupon, and less-famous Le Mousseau and L'Estang at Orbigny, and so on. We didn't see our friends' house on camera — that's too bad. However, we did see ourselves, standing on the side of the road and taking pictures as the lead riders raced past. I'll capture some stills from that coverage today and post them tomorrow if I can.

Today's Tour de France route

The place where we will set up to watch the Tour de France ride by today is about 10 miles south of Saint-Aignan, between the villages called Orbigny and Nouans-les-Fontaines. The caravane of support and publicity vehicles is supposed to drive past our vantage point between 14:00 and 14:30 French time (minus six hours gives you EDT, minus seven for CDT, etc., in the U.S.).

This field is near the place where we'll set up our chairs
this afternoon to watch the Tour fly by.

The peloton, or pack of cyclists, should come through between 15:30 and 16:00, again, Paris time. All the activity for us, then, will be between 7:00 and 11:00 a.m. if you live on the U.S. East Coast or in the Midwest. Or earlier in California. Is the Tour broadcast daily on some TV channel you get back there? If so, the aerial views will be spectacular.

The Tour doesn't go through Chenonceaux, so I thought
I'd give you a picture or two of that famous château here.

There's an old, privately owned château near where we will be sitting this afternoon. It's the Château de l'Estang, and I assume the helicopters will fly over it and images will be shown on TV. Our friends' house might even get into the coverage. Unless it rains, of course. The forecast is for widely scattered showers. Other places you'll see from above are Amboise and Montrichard, for example, in the hour or two before the Tour gets to us.

People in a rowboat at Chenonceau castle

We'll be recording the French TV coverage on our Tivo-type recorder all afternoon. I'll be able to capture some images from that coverage and I'll post them over the next few days if it all comes off according to plan — and it doesn't rain. Editing and cutting the video should keep me busy over weekend, and that's good because we are expecting — hold your breath — rain!

Greek-style chicken wings, ready for the oven

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to put the Greek-style chicken wings in the oven. They've been marinating overnight in lemon juice and olive oil, with fresh thyme, rosemary, and oregano from the garden, along with some garlic and shallots. They'll cook on a baking sheet in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes this morning, before we pack up the car and head out. Callie's going with us.

Watching the Tour go by

Tomorrow, the Tour de France comes through. The "platoon" — le peloton or pack — of cyclists will be riding from Le Mans down through Amboise and Montrichard, and on to Nouans-les Fontaines. It's also passing through the village of Orbigny, which is only about 15 km, or 10 miles, south of Saint-Aignan.

Out in the vineyard with Callie at about 7:00 p.m. yesterday

You can click the picture to see an enlargement, and then click it again if you see
the little magnifying glass with a plus sign in it to get the full-size version.

We have American friends who own a house down there, right on the road that the Tour is riding on. The friends are here, and we're going to their house in the morning, taking the makings for a picnic lunch with us. Greek-style chicken wings, deviled eggs, grated carrot salad — things like that, with bread and wine.

Looking back toward our house

The road will be closed from noon until after the peleton passes by around 4:00, so we'll be "stuck" there for a few hours. Our friends' house is a couple of hundred meters off the road, up a gravel road that is also a public right-of-way. When the times comes, we'll carry our folding chairs down to the paved road and have a front-row seat for the spectacle.

Yesterday I mentioned apples, sauce, and jelly...

That's how we hope it will all work out. I know I've said it's dry, dry, dry here, but wouldn't tomorrow afternoon be just the time when the skies open up? The weather map shows rain over Brittany and Normandy, all the way down to Tours and even Amboise. As usual, Saint-Aignan is right on the line between sun and clouds. So we don't know what it might do.

Windy

The other factor that we can't predict has to do with cars and crowds. What if there are so many people along the road that we can't even find a place to unfold our chairs? I'd be surprised, but it's hard to know what the scene will be. Stay tuned.

Callie posing nicely

Yesterday, as you can see from the pictures here, it was cloudy with frequent patches of sunshine. The temperature was in the lower 70s, after getting close to 90ºF the day before. It was breezy. Even if the grass everywhere is parched, you can see that the vineyard is oh-so-green.

Still no rain

Just a few summertime pictures today. Yesterday was one of those days when it got uncomfortably hot by late in the afternoon. Then the weather changed. They had predicted rain for us and the rest of the western half of the country, and we did get a few drops.

Crossing the bridge over the Cher River into Saint-Aignan

But it was only a few drops, and the clouds had moved on through in about an hour's time. The main thing was that the wind started blowing, and then the air cooled down, so the house started to cool down again. Especially upstairs, where we were, because all the windows were open and the fan was going.

The café-tabac in our village

Today the high temperature in Saint-Aignan is supposed to be in the mid-70s again — much cooler. It's breezy and "fresh" this morning. In fact, Walt protested when I started opening windows in the downstairs part of the house a minute ago, saying it's supposed to be chilly today! I think the house feels stuffy.

A curious deer off in the tall grass

Out back, the grass just keeps getting browner and browner. It hasn't been a good year for stone fruit, in part because it's been too dry and the fruit hasn't had a chance to plump up. The apples look good, and we'll probably have a ton of them this year. I'll make apple jelly and apple sauce.

The pictures in this post are ones that I took in July 2005, when we'd been here only a couple of years. Now it's our ninth summer in Saint-Aignan, and the driest but not the hottest.

Pintade et patates

I haven't been posting a lot of recipes or food pictures lately, but that doesn't mean I'm not still cooking. Yesterday I cooked a guinea hen — in French une pintade — with mushrooms and some pan-roasted new red potatoes.

It's a really simple recipe that makes a delicious main course. I won't go into how you cut up a pintade — the same way you cut up a whole chicken, duck, or turkey, in fact — because I assume that you either already know, or that you buy poultry already cut into pieces. Here in France we can buy it that way too, but only if we want to use battery-raised chickens.

You can see that the flesh of the guinea fowl is pink,
rather than white like chicken. The taste and texture
are different too, but pintade is not as
gamy-tasting as turkey, for example.

You can make this recipe with chicken, or course, and you could also do it with duck. Pintade, duck, or free-range chicken, with their firm flesh, will give the tastiest result. The first step is to brown the poultry pieces in a mixture of butter and olive oil in a pan. Use a high-sided pan or pot with a heavy bottom. The heavy bottom will distribute heat evenly, and the high sides will prevent grease spattering all over your stove or cooktop.

Sliced and sautéed shitake mushrooms

At the same time, slice up and sauté some mushrooms in a separate pan. I used shiitaké mushrooms but button mushrooms or other varieties like oyster mushrooms would be good too. When the mushrooms have rendered their juice and started to brown, take them off the heat.

Start the pintade or poulet pieces by putting them skin side down in the hot pan. Turn them after three to five minutes, when the skin is well browned and starting to turn crispy. Let them cook about the same amount of time on the other side. Then add a sliced or diced onion or, better, about three shallots to the pan, along with some fresh or dried thyme. Salt and pepper all, and then pour on about a cup of white wine.

First brown the poultry pieces on both sides, and then add
shallots, thyme, and white wine to the pan for the braise.

Add the mushrooms and any mushroom juices to the pan at this point. Cover the pan and let it cook on low on top of the stove, or put it in a 325ºF / 160ºC oven, for 30 to 45 minutes while you cook the potatoes. I like poultry well cooked and tender, so I'd cook it for the full 45 minutes.

The potatoes are easy. Use new potatoes that are firm-fleshed (red, Yukon gold, King Edward, Charlotte, etc.) and of a fairly uniform size. Wash them but don't peel them. Put them in a separate pan with melted butter and oil, shake them around to coat them with the fat, and let them cook for two or three minutes uncovered. Then add two or three peeled garlic cloves, some thyme, and salt and pepper to the pan. Pour in half a cup of water, cover the pan, and let them steam. Turn the heat to medium or medium-low.

New red potatoes and a few little turnips (my last-minute
addition) roasing in a sauté pan on top of the stove

If the water all boils away or is absorbed by the potatoes, add a little more. Toward the end of the cooking, when the potatoes are getting close to being done, uncover the pan and let most of the water evaporate.

Once the potatoes are roasted and the pintade or poulet is braised, combine the contents of the two pans in a serving dish, pouring on the braising liquid from the poultry. You can strain out the thyme and shallots if you want to, or leave them in. Make sure to deglaze the pan with a little more white wine if there are brown bits on the bottom that would add flavor.

Here's the pay-off:
Pintade braisée aux champignons et pommes de terre nouvelles.

Serve with a green salad on the side or as a separate course. Bread and wine. Cheese afterwards. Don't eat too much. The leftovers will also be very good.

The Swan of Cambrai; the Eagle of Meaux

François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon died in Cambrai in 1715 as archbishop. King Louis XIV a.k.a. « Le Roi Soleil » died that same year. A priest, educator, and theologian by training, and noble by birth, at the age of 38 Fénelon had been appointed by the king as tutor and spiritual adviser to the royal grandson, who was second in line for the throne. As such, Fénelon was elected to the Académie Française. He was having a successful career.

Earlier, Fénelon had been asked by the Duchesse de Beauvilliers, who had eight daughters, for advice on raising and educating her children. He wrote a book on the subject. He became a friend and confidant of the duke's, who had himself been assigned responsibility for the education of the king's grandchildren. That's the local connection: Beauvilliers was the Duc de Saint-Aignan. The château here was his domain.

Fénelon (1651-1715) — the Swan of Cambrai

Later, in 1695 Fénelon was named archbishop of Cambrai, a city that had only 20 years earlier been annexed into the Sun King's realm. There he wrote a novel called Les Aventures de Télémaque, a story of the education of a young man — the son of Ulysses, in this case — featuring many exciting voyages and adventures. In it, he set forth his rather liberal ideas on questions of education and child-rearing.

Stained glass in the cathedral at Cambrai (above and below)

Fénelon's manuscript, which he had not intended to make public at that stage, was stolen by a servant, printed, and circulated at Louis XIV's court without his permission. Louis XIV saw the satire in Fénelon's novel and wasn't pleased. Fénelon portrayed kings as authoritarian, militaristic, and mercantilist. For this offense, and for theological missteps, Fénelon ended up disgraced, banned from the court, and exiled in Belgium.

As archbishop, Fénelon came to be known as the "the Swan" — Le Cygne de Cambrai. He was eloquent, handsome, and refined, and he had a following in the highest circles. A chronicler of court life at the time, the Duc de Saint-Simon, described Fénelon as "a tall, thin man, fine-featured and pale, with a big nose, eyes in which you could see torrents of fire and spirit, and a face like no other I have ever seen, and which you could never forget even if you never saw him but once." Fénelon's appearance, his entire being, made evident his "finesse, intelligence, grace, decency and, especially, his nobility. You had to struggle to turn your gaze away" when you looked upon him, according to Saint-Simon.*

Fénelon's greatest theological and political adversary was the bishop of the town of Meaux, near Paris. He was a man named Bossuet, who was by 25 years Fénelon's senior and had been one of his mentors. Bossuet had come to be known as « L'Aigle de Meaux » – "The Eagle of Meaux." He was a fiery preacher and orator who was determined to return French Protestants to the Catholic fold. His nature and religion were stricter and more traditionalist than Fénelon's.

Okay, there. Writing this has plunged me back into 17th century French literature and history. I now know more about Bossuet and Fénelon than I remembered from before.

The cathedral in Cambrai

When I was in Cambrai in June, I of course went to see the cathedral. I wanted to know if there was anything there about Fénelon. There was of course — his tomb and the sculpture (1826) in the pictures above and below. It turns out that the 12th century cathedral in Cambrai was demolished during the French Revolution. Today's cathedral, Notre-Dame de Grâce, is a church constructed in the French classical style that dates back only to 1703 (when Fénelon was the archbishop).

Sculpture by David d'Angers, 1826

When I was in Cambrai, I thought I was a little disappointed in the place. It was a letdown. The weather was gray and almost chilly. I thought it might rain at any minute. I wandered through sad, gray little streets. The old main square was a big parking lot. I had lunch but didn't enjoy it. Now that I look back through the pictures I took there, I see how colorful it all was. Those are the joys of digital photography, I guess.

* Here's Saint-Simon's description of Fénelon in French: « Ce prélat était un grand homme maigre, bien fait, pâle, avec un grand nez, des yeux dont le feu et l'esprit sortaient comme un torrent, et une physionomie telle que je n'en ai point vu qui y ressemblât, et qui ne se pouvait oublier, quand on ne l'aurait vue qu'une seule fois. Elle rassemblait tout, et les contraires ne s'y combattaient pas. Elle avait de la gravité et de la galanterie, du sérieux et de la gaieté; elle sentait également le docteur, l'évêque et le grand seigneur; ce qui y surnageait, ainsi que dans toute sa personne, c'était la finesse, l'esprit, les grâces, la décence et surtout la noblesse. Il fallait effort pour cesser de le regarder. »