When we bought this house, we found, propped up against the outside wall, a large metal fire back, broken in two, with the name Isabelle Mahue and the year 1935 cast on it. We had no idea who she was or what she had to do with this house and nor did the neighbours.

Today we went for a walk, passing a large house whose garden is always beautifully kept; the elderly owner was in the garden and asked if we were looking for the sarcophagus (at which point I really wondered how good my grasp of the French language was) and when we looked blank, invited us into the garden. He took us to a small, ancient, Roman church tucked away behind the house, in the porch of which were, to my amazed relief, two sarcophagi. Apparently many centuries ago, the church belonged to a local bishop; he and another priest, who was killed on the road outside the house during the wars of religion, were buried in these sarcophagi, which were placed on the roadside, but when the road was widened several years ago, they were moved into the chuch porch.

This elderly gent, who had been sent away to a religious school at the age of 14, with the intention of making a priest of him, then took us for a look around the church, with its hand-tooled leather altar front and frescoed walls. He apologised for the lack of light (there’s no electricity), but showed us where the key is kept so that we can let ourselves in, early in the afternoon, on a bright, sunny day, if he’s not around. The whole place was superb and I’d have loved to take photos, but it just didn’t seem an appropriate thing to do, so if you’d like to see it for yourselves, you’ll just have to pay us a visit.

The man asked where we live; ” Oh, the Mahue house!” was his reaction. Apparently, he knew Isabelle Mahue, who was very short and very fat; born in 1883, she lived in the house which is now ours until her death in1970 and is buried in a little cemetery beside the Roman church, along with several bishops and other locals.

We learnt lots more about our neighbour, such as his job as an interrogator of torture victims during the Algerian war (we disagree on whether he was the torturer – our French isn’t that good yet) and how his father filled in half the moat that runs round his house, and have been invited to go back on a warmer day so he can show us photos. A fascinating man.