Mice and the Middle Ages

It is a rainy morning here, the sort of weather that makes you glad you can sit inside and drink tea without having to worry about going anywhere.  It's good for a lazy vacation Saturday, although I'm glad it held off yesterday.  Aurelie took me to see a nearby village called Pérouges in the afternoon, which had preserved almost in its entirety its midieval architecture.  Walking through the little slanting streets over stones that I would hate to think of trying to pull a cart over, it was as if we had slipped beneath the layers of development of the last 500 years and were catching glimpses of the way the village might have looked in the days when towns of burgers were first beginning to form, creating environments where commercial relations took on nez power and the old feudal ties of landed lord and hereditary vassel began to decay.  Townships like this, which look like the antithesis of modernity to us today, were actually the cutting edge of developments that would lead to secularism, captitalism, revolution, and a host of other big concepts--at least if my stuffy, Intro to the Later Middle Ages professor of last year is to be believed.

Not everything in Pérouges was a relic, though, and I came upon this personal vehicle that would have fit right in in my home town:

Because it was the off season, and a cold and windy day the town was relatively empty, with the tourist museums shut, and the only visitors the few families who had brought their children to wander the streets. (I imagine that, as a six-year-old, this would be an even more awesome place to visit).  The quiet was actually quite nice, though, and it felt appropriate to the setting.  Aurélie and I did some exploring >>

...Then we went to taste the town specialty (Aurélie said, "Of course every little town in France has their own food that is a particular product of the locale").  In this case it was the galette de Pérouges, a sort of a flat cake baked with sugar on top, something like a sweet pizza.  We tried it, along with tea and coffee, at a little restaurant that had been serving the same cake since it opened in 1912.  The interior definitely suggested that little had changed there in the last 98 years.  The walls were decorated with old-fashioned china and brass cookware and the waitresses with lacy aprons and little caps, and we were able to warm ourselves in the heat of a large open hearth while we ate.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones to treat ourselves yesterday.  The other adventure of the day was an escapade of Aurélie's cats.  She has two, brother and sister, who she brought with her from Nevers for the holidays, and who are enjoying the country life a little too much.  While we were sitting watching a movie after dinner that evening, Omar, came trotting in from the garden to show us what he had found--a mouse, and one that had not yet succombed to his attentions!  We proceeded to have very girly responses (squealing, and staying out of the way), while Omar began to enjoy himself with the poor mouse, letting it run here and there, and then catching it again, while it sqeaked pitifully.  After a while we convinced him to take it outside to finish it off, and we were just breathing a sigh of relief, when he brought it back again, still alive.  This time I, after much dithering, tried to rescue the mouse, using a dustpan and a rolled-up magazine, which prompted Omar to take it outside again.  This happened about three more times--mouse came in, made brief and increasingly failing runs for freedom, I approached with the dustpan, and Omar retreated, carrying his prize.  At last he came in and, having decided that the game was over, finally killed the mouse and proudly ate it in front of us.  There was a lot of crunching. 

Relieved that it was finally over, we were settling back to watch the movie, when Biscotte, who had been watching Omar jealously the whole time, trotted in with her own mouse!!  Mercifully, this one had already given up the ghost, bu Biscotte was determined that this would not spoil her fun, and she commenced to play with it, flinging the corpse the air and leaping about while we groaned and tried to avert our eyes.  After far too long (for us) she finally gave up and polished off her own as well, but it was rather too much like being a spectator at the Roman games for my taste.  I know they're cats and they can't help their nature, but still...!

Biscotte, looking innocent--don't be fooled!