Heptaméron with Chardonnay | Gerard Oberle

Following the model of Marguerite de Navarre's "Heptaméron," seven days, seven short stories are related by the author to a friend and reader who demanded them, in the continuity of Chassignet's "Bonnes nouvelles." In this Morvan-inspired Heptaméron, we find the beloved region of Oberlé, his favorite characters Chassignet and Mireille Larroque, his love for books, fine dining, Chardonnay, and his lively style. Mr. Justin Galmiche portrays a Franc-Comtois scholar, a delusional and reactionary small professor who has invented a ministerial past and a phantasmagorical government, commenting daily online on articles from Médiapart, while his wife entertains herself with a fellow whom she passes off as her brother. Volodia: A young man, a doctoral student working on the theme of death in French Baroque literature, arrives and settles in at Chassignet's place. Chassignet tolerates this intrusion for a year before kicking the intruder out. Later, in Cairo, Naguib Mahfouz reveals to Chassignet the tragic fate of Volodia, a strange dandy, "black narcissus," who died of leishmaniasis. Suzie Mangold's Revenge: At a book fair (Oberlé describes these events with a cruel wit), the author is offered sweets by an admirer which Chassignet makes him throw away. The story: an author friend of Chassignet, Henri Schott, narrowly escaped poisoning in the past from a similar gift by a frustrated admirer. Freux: In the style of Hitchcock/Daphné du Maurier's "The Birds," two stories of vengeful birds unfold, the first showing a Hopi chief entrusting his revenge against his disrespectful white wife to a monstrous bird of prey, the second involving a colony of crows retaliating against a poacher who tried to silence them by poisoning. Chablis: Rémy Labarre, a failed and neurotic writer, first identifies with Xavier Forneret, then with a writer portrayed in cinema by John Gielguld, and ultimately dies like him from an excess of Chablis. Mrs. Mathivat: Chassagnet, a skilled rider, and the less skilled Oberlé visit the Mathivat farm and ride their horses. Mrs. Mathivat, with a Bovary-like personality, once deceived her husband and dreamt of running away with a certain Aimé Cazeneuve, who stood her up at a crucial meeting. Returning shamefacedly home, Mr. Mathivat never doubted that her husband had read the farewell letter she left. He never mentioned it, and the couple aged harmoniously. The unfaithful one will never know that her husband properly disposed of the seducer. The King of Bondoufle: This is a brief fantasy in the style and lineage of Pierre Bettencourt's "Les Plaisirs du roi," alias Jean Sadinet.