June 20, 2013
Caunes-Minervois to Narbonne
and Back

          I awake after a restless night, full of foreboding about the eventual resolution of the problems with the car.  Nonetheless, I rise and suit up for another brief bicycle ride before planning something to do with Alline while we wait for the taxi to pick us up at 1:00 p.m. to take us to Narbonne to pick up the Seat "Lion".

          Rather than riding in the direction of Peyriac and Rieux, as I normally do, when I pass the sign on the left for Notre Dame du Cros, I take it, thinking the road will be less crowded.  It is indeed empty, and as I pedal, rises, until I am in sight of a long ridge.  A bit further on, I see pasturage below and two horses, one a pinto, the other a golden brown, gamboling.  Over a tiny bridge and on the left I see a roadside marker, a shrine with an image of the Mother and Child.  Just a little bit farther and I see, nestled in the trees, the chapel of Notre Dame du Cros.  I continue on until I reach the church, which is framed by an enormous white crucifix bearing the date "1886" on the right.  Next to the church is a small, well-cared for house.  The church itself has the date "1913" chiseled over one of its doors.  I try to enter the church, but it is locked.  It seems a secluded spot, seldom visited, although I note that a detailed marker explains that the little stream flowing beside the chapel is considered to have special powers and that every September 8 there is a pilgrimage to the spot.

          I walk a few feet beyond the church, following the little path that continues downward beyond its steps and follows the stream. Just as I turn I meet a young fawn, all legs and eyes and ears walking up the path towards me.  She looks at me with the happiest expression on her face until, suddenly realizing...my apart-ness...she startles.  Her fright is such that, in her fear and haste, she loses her balance on those lovely legs and actually falls on her side before getting up again and...disappearing into the forest.

          I ride back to 30 avenue des Minervois and suggest to Alline that we might walk to Notre Dame du Cros and back before we have to be picked up by the taxi.  Indeed, we make the walk and reach the church, which I am surprised to discover is open.  A lone woman prays at the ancient statue, another at a pew, while a youngish priest, dressed in the habit of a hermit, prepares the altar for daily Mass at 11:30 a.m.  Several other people come in for Mass as well.  Despite its remote location, Mass is said there every day including Sunday by the hermit, who also writes books, including one published just last year.

          Notre Dame du Cros was a "dependence" of the abbey of Caunes-Minervois in the 9th century and has been renovated many times through the centuries.  Inside it contains a primitive statue of the Virgin and child and paintings of significant skill.  A photo of Francis I, the Pope, graces the entrance to the chapel.  It is extraordinary peaceful inside.  The website of the Mayor of Caunes-Minervois contains photographs of the chapel and observes that it "was secularized several times and valiantly resisted the outrages of the Revolution".

                                                                      ***

          In the afternoon the taxi takes Alline and me to pick up the Seat at the Hertz counter opposite the train station in Narbonne, a 19th century Beaux Arts building.  I was here in 1998, enjoying lunch before changing trains for Saint Jean de Luz on the Atlantic coast . "Le Bistro du Chef", a restaurant in the station where Bill and I had lunch, was a Gault-Millau Guide notable restaurant then. (Henri Gault and Christian Millau were journalists who went into the restaurant reviewing business, championed nouvelle cuisine and created an alternative to the Michelin guides to restaurants.)   Now Le Bistro du Chef  is a packaged eatery.  The dark-haired, rotund woman who made no fuss when we showed up with our suitcases asking if we could have lunch, later confiding that her summer had been loused up because of the weather, was long gone, replaced by a wide-eyed miss who knew nothing about the history of "Le Bistro du Chef".  France won the World Cup that summer of 1998, the only good thing that happened during a year during which the French were particularly miserable, afflicted by a rumbling discontent called "la grogne".  That was the year Jacques Chirac, the President, defeated in the legislative elections, had to accept Lionel Jospin, a Socialist, as his Prime Minister.  Their "cohabitation", as it was called, did not last long.

          Much later, Chirac was investigated for irregularities during his tenure as Mayor of Paris, but he is now remembered with nostalgia by many Frenchmen, first because he always thought that his foreign policy ought to present an alternative to America's; and also because everything about him suggested old France, proud and unbowed.  He served two six-year terms before handing over to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.  It is said that his wife, Bernadette and he, have always addressed each other using the formal "vous", which is something right out of a Balzac novel.  When he dies (he is now eighty), old France will die with him, the present stamping out the past, just as the new owners of the new Bistro du Chef did the old.