Synopsis of the novel of Marcel Aymé

Vouivre , publication 1943

Drawn from an old legend of Franche-Comté, the mythical character of Vouivre appears under the features of superb a sauvageonne, bearing on the head a diadem with an enormous ruby, object of desire in all the area.

But Vouivre is always accompanied by an army of invisible snakes which emerge at the time when one warns themselves to conceal the jewel, and which put the robber in parts. Arsène Muselier discovers it at the time when it mows one of his meadows. Vouivre bathes very naked, leaving its jewels and clothing on the river bank. Arsene sees the ruby, but it is more tried by the bather, which allures Vouivre, more accustomed to be continued for its richnesses than for its beauty. Blow, Vouivre pursues Arsène everywhere where it can it. At the market of Pares, it finds it equipped into town elegant, and it comes to cause it until in its agricultural work.

But Arsène is a careful peasant, at the same time realistic and tender, he is already in love with a girl of the country, Juliette Mindeur. Contrary to the son Beuillat, a returned good with nothing the city without glory no, he never seeks to adapt the ruby.

He will however face the army of snakes to try to save a gamine country, the small Weasel, at the moment when Eugene Beuillat starts a swirl of reptiles by his awkwardness.

Through this history as real as fantastic, Marcel Aymé presents a gallery of extremely right and tasty rural portraits: the priest skeptic, the radical believing, the grave-digger Requiem in love with a pocharde, Devouring It, and well others.

; Example of dialog between Requiem and Arsene - But what you would make with your billion, asked Arsène curious about one answer to the question which it had already raised with itself.

The jaw hanging, the grave-digger started to reflect, a little surprised not to feel in oneself the boiling of its desires. Its first thought was for the wine. It would always have at his place a barrel with its exclusive use, and for Robidet, another smaller. Arsene having pointed out to him that such an ambition was not with the measurement of its fortune, it was disabled and took again his meditation. The ideas came to him slowly.

It is necessary to read this novel like a poetic study of rural manners, a testimony of time on a frame of mind which still exists in France.

Adaptation

• 1989 : Vouivre film of Georges Wilson

See too

• Mélusine

• Vouivre

External bond

• . Presentation of Vouivre into Frank County, its origins and its misadventures by the CRDP of Franche-Comté, June 2000

• Comparative study of the myth of Mélusine with the Middle Ages and the {{ⅩⅩE century}}, master's paper of letter modern