An interesting bit of book production with my copy being from the Toulouse of 1943 and printed on the cheapest brown paper that I have ever come across, much browner than that in any English book that I have come across from that time. Furthermore, despite the cheap paper, and the paper covers, the thing has a sewn binding. It might even be a first edition, including as it does a bit in the front about how the first so many copies were numbered and the next so many more were printed on the finest parchment. Would the parchment have been allowed in war-time England?
I resorted to a diagram to keep the story in mind as I went along. We start with Albin and Pascaline, brother and sister from a Savoyard mountain village. Albin dies in an accident up a mountain and Albin's intended then marries Pascaline's intended. Pascaline legs it down to Provence to get away from it all.
Where, after various adventures, she is picked up by Laurent who has just got engaged to Thérèse whose main virtue is a rich daddy who can provide the necessary to build up Laurent's holding, big but derelict. She and Laurent have Pascal on the side, Pascal being the 'Nans le Berger' of the title. Laurent goes on to have Firmin on the right side of the blanket, his official son and heir. Some time later, Pascal should have married Félicie (also with rich daddy) but as it turns out (the now thriving) Firmin does. Then she gives herself to Pascal one night when hubby has gone to the fair and Antoine (the second first born son of the story from the wrong side of the blanket) is the result. Some time later, Antoine wants to marry a travelling & penniless Italian girl (not a Gypsy) and is expelled from hearth and home to be looked after by Pascal. They all live happily ever after with Pascal being the doting but unrecognised grandfather. Pascal, following his Savoyard uncle, eventually dies in an accident up a mountain.
Important in all this is that Pascaline, on her death bed, tells all to Pascal. But he sticks to being Firman's shepherd and bottles up both his paternity, his birthright and the fact that Antoine is his son, only breaking down when he is on his death bed and Antoine can't hear what he is saying.
Lazy once again with the dictionary, so a fair bit passed me by. But I think I have now worked Thyde Monnier out of the system, not least because any follow up is going to be expensive. French telly made the book into a television series but Amazon want forty euros for that and Thyde Monnier wrote a four volume autobiography, a tell all job along the lines of the one that Simenon wrote, but Amazon want no less than two hundred euros for that if I want a proper set or maybe a hundred if I take it in bits. So I shall pass on both - and handy that someone has taken the trouble to provide the free & nicely illustrated summary of 'Moi' mentioned last time (http://thyde.monnier.pagesperso-orange.fr/).
PS: poking Amazon a little harder I find a second hand copy of the television series for less than ten euros. But on arriving at the checkout, they tell me that there is a little problem with my order, that is to say that the vendor declines to send the thing over here. So I shall continue to make do without, at least for the moment.
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