Saint Cucufa

He stands by the check-out counter fumbling for his check book a loaded caddy abreast when I enter at noon. He looks humble, yet with his gray beard and captain Archibald Haddock cap is always waiting to grow into his own self. A géomètre or land surveyor all his life, after having lost his eardrum as artilleryman during WWII, a man in short, who knows his terrain. Ask him anything about the area, he will have an answer. Now he is losing his eyesight and signs the check without having to fill it out. "Je vous fais confiance," he rasps at the young clerk.

Saint Cucufa

Feeling like Tintin, I ask about Saint Cucufa and he spills it out like honey.

A couple of weeks ago I strode into the forest where I followed a stream past clearings and tables and few lovers around in the sunshine, embracing on the grass, or families with children picnicking on blankets.

Once I emerged above the dam there was the artificial lake called etang Saint Cucufa. I approached a couple of girls seated on the balustrade that protects most of the levee from children falling into the water. None of them knew what Saint Cucufa meant, nor its history.

Strolling along the path surrounding the "lake" I ask other people, usually older couples. None of them knows. Then one says that Josephine died here. She got a cold and pneumonia. The forest guards, attractive young women astride beautifully kept horses, don’t know.

The magic of this place is quite enchanting yet its history tragic.

Saint Cucufa a martir in Barcelona?

He tells me the story of Josephine Bonaparte who everybody here calls Josephine de Beauharnais. He gestures and mimics how she’s seducing the Czar after the defeat of Waterloo and her two hours on the lake in a small rowing boat where she appears to have caught a cold that killed her. The Czar who had been her intermittend lover since Waterloo, never arrived.

In 8 days the army corps of engineers built her dam; although he was divorced and separated from his infertile wife, Napoleon who gave her the lake as a gift, still loved her.

Ready to climb on his WWI bike loaded with boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables, he gives me his name: Penny. "Penny" he says, "like two pennies make a pence".