Who was Faustine?
It remains an enigma. Although Marie Vergon, the woman who was to marry Toulet, is sometimes identified with that name, according to Jacques Dyssord Faustine is called Rose P., and is said to have worked at the Auberge Lesquerré at Jurançon.
Dyssord leaves this description:
Dyssord leaves this description:
"Elle était brune,
bien en chair et un sang généreux empourprait ses lèvres sensuelles dont in
léger duvet ombragait la supérieure."
Apparently she married a wealthy hotelier and after a somewhat unsettled life she died in 1914, at the Saint-Luc Asylum, at Pau. Toulet saw her there in 1909, not far from the Dominican convent where he went to school. She spotted him from her open window, despite the dusk of an autumn evening:
"De sa fenêtre ouverte, elle m'a reconnut malgré le crépuscule, et, quelque souvenir frivole lui montant à la tête, elle laissa soudain s'égrener jusqu'à moi la perle mélodieuse de son roucoulement."
Clearly Rose P. existed. But there were other candidates for Faustine, including the aforementioned Marie Vergon, a certain Marie-Louise B, and other, unidentified. Faustine may very well be a conflation.
Lesquerré
He kept an inn in
the Béarn, and was perhaps the husband of Faustina. According to Dyssord, "the kitchen of gleaming copper pots, the spit like a Toledo blade turning
under the broad mantle of the high chimney, before a fire of great oak logs,
would not have failed to attract, had he been lost in this
vicinity, the good Father Jerome Coignard, a character of Anatole France his novel La Rotisserie de la Reine Pédauque."
Contrerime XXXIV
Ce fut par un soir de l'automne
A sa dernière fleur
Que l'on nous prit pour Mgr
L'Evêque de Bayonne,
Sur la route de Jurançon.
J'étais en poste, avecque
Faustine, et l'émoi d'être évêque
Lui sécha sa chanson.
Cependant cloches, patenôtres,
Volaient autour de nous.
Tout un peuple était à genoux :
Nous mêlions les nôtres,
Ô Vénus, et ton char doré,
Glissant parmi la nue,
Nous annonçait la bienvenue
Chez Monsieur Lesquerré.
Translation
One
evening with autumn
On
its very last flower
We
were taken for Monseigneur
The
Bishop of Bayonne,
On
the road to Jurançon.
I
was in the mail coach
With
Faustine, when her promotion
Stifled
her song.
Meanwhile
bells, pater nosters,
Were
flying around.
A
parish kneeling on the ground:
Add
two imposters.
Ô
Venus, with your gilded ferry,
Slipping
deftly ahead,
It
was you who warmed the bed
At
M. Lesquerré’s.
.