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| A wedding I performed
for a neighboring Pastor also proved memorable. I did what was required:
I had chairs brought forward, assembled the witnesses, and the wedding
took place. The only thing missing was the marriage Bible which the
church always offers the newly-weds as the final gesture of the ceremony.
I had looked everywhere in the Sacristy, but there was no Bible anywhere.
I told my young couple to ask their regular Pastor, who would be at the
church on Sunday, to give them the wedding Bible. It so happened,
however, that the colleague whom I had replaced was not only hard of hearing
but also forgetful. When my couple arrived after the Sunday service
and asked for the wedding (the word Bible went unheard), Pastor Vielheu
remembered vaguely about the wedding. Thinking that he had forgotten
about it, he put his best foot forward by not being surprised. He
thus had two chairs brought forward, assembled the witnesses, and married
the young couple one more time. The only thing missing, again, was
a wedding Bible, which he could not find either, and which had to be ordered
from Montpellier. He therefore asked the couple to come by the next
Sunday to receive it. There is no report, however, that Pastor Vielheu
married them a third time on that occasion.
Another funeral in Lasalle itself left a strong impression. As the cemetery was not far from our church, everybody followed the hearse on foot. Unlike the Catholic priest, who led funeral processions in solitary splendor, the Protestant minister would walk with the family. This posed the problem of what to talk about during the thirty-minute walk. I had always been adamant that the only decent subject of conversation during that march was the deceased and his life. Nevertheless, one day, as our procession rounded the corner by the butcher shop, the brother of the deceased broke ranks to examine the butcher's blackboard, on which was announced which ration tickets would be honored the next day. Returning to the procession, he announced, to the gleeful smiles of all (except for the minister), "There will be boudins tomorrow morning." My most successful contacts were with the farmers themselves, whom I tried to visit in the fields during working hours. In this setting the horses would rest for a few minutes, while I was able to chat with the farmer and invite him to the services or other events at the church. I would then, casually, say something about his horses and the work in the fields, asking him to let me plow a furrow or two. With a malicious smile and expecting the Pastor to make a fool of himself, the farmer would acquiesce. I would then trace a perfectly straight furrow with his team and his plow, earning his admiration as a Pastor who knew the farming profession. I never told them where I had learned all this. But I was always mindful of Farmer Argoud and his mules, and I thanked them, silently, for the excellent and useful lessons learned during the "strange war" of 1939. On one occasion I talked
at length to one of my parishioners and his farmhand, a strong lad of about
fifteen, whom he had hired recently from the Lozère, another mountain
region not far to the northwest. When I met the farmer a few days
later, he told me that the boy had left. On the way home from the
field after my last visit, he had told the lad that I was the Protestant
minister. Hearing |
