Hilltop's Tale

From the lone wooded crag dominating the valley of Mercues in Southwest France, plunderer, paladin and prelate had watched the pageant of Europe pass by over 20 centuries. Last week to Mercues' lofty height, awkwardly and at last, came the people.

Caesar's men first fortified the crag as sentry for their nearby town of Cadurcum (Cahors). The brawling Counts of Toulouse held it in the days when Italian money lenders flocking to Cahors made "caorism" a synonym for usury. The Bishops of Cahors, who held Mercues longest, built a fortress there; and under its battlements rode robber barons, Knights Templar and hymn-singing pilgrims to Rome and Jerusalem. Henry II of England led his armoured warriors past Mercues and Thomas `a Beckett paused there on his way to become governor of Cahors. By the reign of Louis XIV the rich bishops had turned the fort into a chateau with a magnificent terrace where they imitated the pageantry of the Sun King's court. In 1905, when France dispossessed the church of its real estate, wealthy Dr. Jean-Louis Faure, a celebrated Paris surgeon, bought the chateau. In World War II Communist partisans amused themselves by shooting out 250 windows. After liberation the chateau was restored to Dr. Faure's heirs, two widowed daughters.

The New Aristocracy. Through the crag's proud centuries, a squalid village had groveled 500 feet below on the poplar-lined banks of the river Lot. (Dr. Faure's daughters regarded the village as "une salete degoutante," a blot on creation.)

The other day, what wars and revolts had failed to bring about was produced by the black market: the village went up the crag. The daughters of Dr. Faure, impoverished by war and inflation, had turned the castle into a hotel, stayed on to manage it. Among their first customers were bashful, leathernecked Pierre Barriere, a railroad worker, and his pert, white-satined bride, Jane Cantarel. Their horny-handed wedding guests, stimulated by wine and altitude, made the bishops' terrace ring with the raucous Les Montagnards (The Mountain People).

Mercues' aged priest explained to a foreign guest: "It's the most important wedding of the season. Her father's the richest man hereabouts. You see, she's the butcher's daughter."

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