The Mayor & the Priest

For a country of lively anticlericalism. Marxist polemics and half-empty churches, France has some surprising reading tastes. The bestseller of the last ten years, reports the current issue of Les Nouvelles Litteraire, is The Little World of Don Camillo,* Italian Author Giovanni Guareschi's famed series of stories about the saintly deviltries of Village Priest Don Camillo in his running war with Communist Mayor Peppone. One reason for the book's popularity may be that, while to U.S. readers such shenanigans are amusingly exotic, to Frenchmen they are amusingly, and often disturbingly, familiar. There is, for instance, the case of the mayor, the priest and the hearse of Civrac. Scratches & Mildew. In 1935 Father Jean-Rene Lagrave came to the village of Civrac-en-Medoc (pop. 580) in southern France, and took up residence in the parish house beside the beautiful, red-tiled, 12th century church. Plump, pink-cheeked Father Lagrave, 64, played his violin, said his Mass, baptized, married and buried--and all was well. All was still well when tall, lean Henri Mamour was elected mayor. Mamour was a freethinker, but that did not stop him from including in his election platform a pledge to "build up, improve and enlarge the presbytery of Civrac." There was a little trouble over a chateau the priest bought to turn into an old people's home. The mayor said that Abbe Lagrave was asking too much money from the village treasury for such parish projects; the priest said that Mamour was angry because the mayor and a group of vintners had planned to buy the chateau at a bargain rate themselves. But the hearse was a bigger issue. It had always stood in the parish-house garage. But then Father Lagrave bought a car, and the hearse was moved under the protecting eaves of the schoolhouse. This was not satisfactory; parents complained that their children were depressed by the sight of the great black carriage with its silver trimmings, and the village authorities complained that the children were clambering all over it and scratching the paint. So the hearse was moved to the butcher's. That was not satisfactory either; the big slabs of meat hanging near by were said to be causing mildew in the hearse. Last December the municipal council voted overwhelmingly to move the hearse back to the parish house. Moreover, the fire engine and the corn-husking machine were to be kept at the parish house too. Forgiveness. Workmen began battering down a presbytery wall preparatory to building a new garage for these vehicles. Next day, Mayor Mamour and Robert Mocriau, the local garde champetre (village policeman), arrived to inspect operations. They found that Father Lagrave had blocked the hole in the wall. Police man Mocriau and Priest Lagrave began to exchange remarks. Suddenly, Father Lagrave seized the policeman by the arm and pointed to the letters G.C. (for garde champetre) on his cap. "You know what those letters stand for, don't you," he shouted. "They stand for 'Grand Cretin' (Great Imbecile), and that's exactly what you are!" After that, Civrac-en-Medoc became a village divided. The mayor habitually referred to the violin-playing priest as "that low-life fiddler," and the priest called the mayor a pagan. On the priest's side were the pious; ranged against him were the mayor, Policeman Mocriau, the proprietor of the bar-cafe (who had been prevented by Lagrave from turning the parish hall into a public dance hall) and Mme. Germain Camin, wife of a municipal councilor, whom Lagrave had fired from her job as his housekeeper. It was a formidable combination. In Don Camillo's little world, the priest, for all his faults, always wins. But the little world of France is harsher. Last week Father Lagrave packed his two battered suitcases and said his last Mass at Civrac before a tiny congregation. Acting on repeated complaints from the mayor's faction, the Archbishop of Bordeaux had assigned Father Lagrave to a distant village. "I hold no bitterness," said Lagrave, as he prepared to make room for the village hearse at last. "This has not been a pleasant pastorate." His last sermon was on the subject of forgiveness.

* Among the others: Le Grand Cirque, by Pierre Clostermann, the memoirs of a French pilot with the R.A.F.; / Chose Freedom, by Victor Kravchenko; Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler; The Silence of the Sea, a bitter resistance novel by Vercors (Jean Bruller); The Little Prince, a modern fairy tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; The Plague, by Existentialist Albert Camus: Les Garnets du Major Thompson, by Pierre Daninos, a gentle satire on the French; Conquest of Everest, by Sir John Hunt; Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor; Jesus and His Times, by Henry Daniel-Rops.

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