"Jean de Florette" and "Manon des sources": two of the finest stories from Marcel Pagnol's body of work. The narrative is set in the early twentieth century, shortly after the Great War: automobiles were still making their first sputtering sounds and the telephone was a luxury only a bar owner could afford; an era when it was said to be possible to walk from Aix to Nice "without stepping into the sun." Twenty kilometers from the Old Port, the Bastidiens "resembled neither the Marseillais nor even the Provençals of the greater suburbs." They lived off their vegetables, the milk from their goats, the lean pork they slaughtered each year, a few chickens, and especially the game they poached. A rural France steeped in bigotry tinged with ancestral superstitions, even as the Third Republic endeavored to educate a generation of "secular socialist anticlericals" who railed against the Jesuits. Two peasants "hard, harsh, cunning, closed-minded, relentless" opposed the return to the land of a city dweller portrayed as a gentle dreamer who swears only by modernity against routine. They blocked the spring on his land, driving "Jean de Florette" to his death and making way for his daughter "Manon des sources" to seek revenge. Her friend, an old Piedmontese woman, arms raised, uttered a solemn curse: "Let the pigs die! Let the goats die! Let the olives fall! Let the beans wither! Barren women! One-eyed men! Old twisted folk! Hail on the vines! Pip in the henhouse! Rats in the cellar! Fire in the barn! Thunder on the church!" This terrible litany, barely understood, made the unbelievers laugh until tears streamed down their faces. But two old women fled in terror, making the sign of the cross. "Watch out! Make her stop! She's cursing us!" Pamphile and the baker thrust their index and little fingers from their clenched fists, pointing them seven times at the witch while crying out the conjuration: "Hi...Hi...hiii." The priest's maid, an expert in exorcisms, appeared with a bowl in hand: it was holy water she courageously threw in the face of the frenzied woman. Then the awakened Piedmontese made the sign of the cross and cried: "It's the evil eye! You are all doomed!" At that moment, the village's only fountain, whose supply Manon had carefully diverted upstream in an underground cave in the hills, "sighed long and fell silent." "I told you she was cursing us! You all laughed, didn't you? And now look what's happened! There's only one thing to do: put the woodcutter back in his box, otherwise the fountain will never flow again! And if she won't lift the curse out of friendship, we'll make her drink a liter of holy water and warm her feet over hot coals!" (to be continued) Nasolo Valiavo Andriamihaja