This is a sequel to An Ardent Admirer. Belle becomes aware, and even reciprocates, the Beast's ever-increasing affection. The title is a play on words; like 'Ardent II', and 'Ardent, Also'.
This tale was inspired by the 1946 French motion picture, La Belle et La Bête, directed by Jean Cocteau, and staring Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais as the Beast and the Prince.
It was just after World War II, and the famous director felt that people needed to see something in the way of a fantasy. If you're ever among foreign film buffs and Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête is mentioned, you'll see the sort of respect it engenders.
Back in the 1970's, when I was a callow young college student, before the days of video rentals, the only way to catch one's fave foreign or vintage film was when the local libraries, and cinema societies and guilds had a public showing. This film was a perennial favorite.
It is well worth watching, black-and-white, subtitles, and all. Last time I checked, it was on at Youtube. I borrowed from it shamelessly, including the Beast not allowing Belle to gaze directly into his eyes, or his claws smoking whenever he shed blood. I learned that "Ardent" is also the name of the Prince in Cocteau's version of the Beauty and the Beast tale. I love it when stories coincide on little points.
I can't praise it enough. It weaves a most potent spell. For all you shameless sentimental soap opera relationship'pers and lovers of fairytale romance…if you aren't caught up like I was, I'll be a monkey's…or a Beast's…uncle.
I also found that the Shelly Duvall Fairy Tale Theater version of the story is a fairly faithful retelling reproduction of the Jean Cocteau version. Also available for viewing on Youtube.
On with the show. This tale is for that inner person all of us have that seeks to love and to be loved.
Ardent, Too
chpt 1
Molyneaux was picturesque little village nestled in a charming little valley amid the hills of rural France.
Maurice Bricateur had come here as a young man. He was a tinker by trade, an itinerate tinsmith, a bricoleur. And he was a toolmaker, a outilleur. But it was his passion to be an inventor, an inventeur.
His good friend was Auguste Relieu, a pamphleteer and ardent political activist. Some called him an agitator and a firebrand. Auguste was born in Molyneaux. His family, as with the families of most of the inhabitants, had dwelt there for generations. His father was a bookbinder and the proprietor of the bookshop, as was his grandfather and great-grandfather before him. Auguste and Maurice got on well at once. Together, they wandered the countryside, making a living doing piecework and odd jobs.
Their interests couldn't be different. Auguste loved to discuss Voltaire, revolution, and politics. Maurice loved to discuss Benjamin Franklin, inventions, and technology.
While they worked, Auguste engaged in many debates, that often turned into disputes. He reminded himself that both Dante and Voltaire were pamphleteers. So he considered himself in good company. What harm can a book do that costs a hundred crowns, as Voltaire himself wrote. Twenty volumes folio will never make a revolution. It is the little pocket pamphlets of thirty sous that are to be feared.
Maurice sharpened scythes and hoes. He repaired wall and mantel clocks, firearms, windlasses, winches, and whetstones. If it had hinges, sprockets, pulleys, axles, and other contrivances, he examined it, tinkered with it, and usually improved it.
Word reached Auguste that his father had passed away, leaving the him the bookstore as a final bequeathment. So the fiery pamphleteer settled down to become a staid businessman. His friend Maurice came with him and also settled in Molyneaux.
They both courted the loveliest girl in the village, Jeanne Marie Louise Thérèse Martin. She had marvelous chestnut hair and deep brown eyes. Under the summer sun, her hair would lighten to almost an auburn shade. She stole many hearts with her smile and melodic voice. She consented to be the bride of Maurice, and Auguste did not begrudge his friend's good fortune.
Maurice built a house equipped with a propeller on a weather vane on the roof and a water wheel on the side. Here were two sources of power for the little machines that sliced and peeled vegetables, turned meat on a rotisserie, blew the coals for a forge, and even worked a little device that generated some electrical current. He built the first steam engines in Molyneaux. They whistled and rumbled; and occasionally exploded, to the smug amusement of the other citizens.
Jeanne and Maurice had a single child, a daughter, Adélaïde Annabelle Charlotte Daphné Gabrielle Jeannette Marie Bricateur. Her names were taken from many different sources, and each name was significant.
'Adélaïde' was from the tenth century St. Adelaide, the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great. It derived from the Germanic name 'Adalheidis", which meant 'of a noble kind'.
'Annabelle' was from St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Madonna and the grandmother of Christ, and from Amabilis, a fifth century French saint, whose name meant 'lovable'.
'Charlotte' signified Auguste Relieu's heroine Charlotte Corday, of the French Revolution. The name was also the female form of Charles, and signified Charlemagne, the king of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor in the eighth and ninth centuries. The girl herself would one day rejoice that her name as the same as that of one of her favorite adulthood authors, Charlotte Brontë.
'Daphné' meant 'laurel' in Greek, and was the name of one of Jeanne Marie's favorite characters in Greek mythology, a nymph who was changed into a laurel tree to avoid being Apollo's unwilling bride. The girl herself would one day desire to escape being forced into an unwilling marriage with one of the men of Molyneaux.
'Gabrielle' was from the Christian Archangel who announced the birth of the Christ to the Holy Child's blessed Mother.
'Jeannette' was from the French heroine Jeanne d'Arc…and the child's mother. It was the female from of 'John', after the Christian saints John the Baptist and John the Apostle of the first century.
'Marie' was from the Blessed Mother of Christ…and of course the girl's own mother. The only significance to the order of the names was their alphabetical sequence.
Auguste was both Maurice's best man at Jeanne and Maurice's wedding and Adélaïde Annabelle Charlotte Daphné Gabrielle Jeannette Marie's godfather at her christening.
Her parents tried calling her by all her various names. But 'Belle' was what stuck. 'Beauty'; such a name in its simplicity was both appropriate and divinely ordained. Like her mother before her, Belle was the most beautiful girl in the village.
Jeanne loved her preoccupied, driven husband. She loved only a little less the man who was like a brother to her husband and a second father to her daughter. And she loved the daughter who, like herself, had an insatiable desire for stories of romance, enchantment, and long-ago and faraway locales.
Sadly, she passed away when Belle was only ten years old. On her deathbed, she called to Auguste.
"Dearest friend," she said, in barely a whisper, "We had loved each other…all our lives. And I thought to…become your wife…someday…but you brought a dear man with you…when you came back to Molyneaux." She rested a moment to gather her strength. "My dear Maurice is gifted…but he is…impractical. You're wise…to the ways…of the world. Take care of my family…after I'm gone. See that Belle doesn't…neglect her letters. Feed her mind. I love my village…but it already treats her…like it treats her father. Don't let her be lonely. Promise me…on your love for me."
"I promise, Jeanne," said Auguste, heartache tightening his throat. "On my love for you."
Father, daughter, and friend mourned the beloved Jeanne Marie Louise Thérèse. In their grief, the two men who loved Jeanne sought consolation in their vocations and in raising the girl who was the daughter of the one after the flesh and the daughter of the heart of both.. Maurice withdrew from being a practical toolmaker and concentrated on inventing. Auguste withdrew entirely from political activism and canvassed France and Europe itself for books. He tutored Belle, and other Molyneaux children as well, including two on whom tutoring was wasted, Louis Le Fou and Gaston Duchasse.
But Adélaïde Annabelle Charlotte Daphné Gabrielle Jeannette Marie, daughter of Jeanne Marie Louise Thérèse, was Auguste's pride and joy. He continued to wander, but it was no longer with the intent of dispensing revolution and pamphlets. He traveled far and wide, sampling music and drama…all with the intent of conveying his impressions of the experiences back to Molyneaux and broadening the girl's mind and cultural horizons.
Auguste lavished upon little Belle all the love and devotion that a father would lavish on a dozen daughters. He wished he could afford to take his dear friends with him on his travels. He wished that Jeanne Marie were still alive so he could share his experiences with her, also. He would've taken Belle with him, if Maurice could have spared her. It was she who, from the time her mother was taken with the final illness, kept the house clean, the garden and livestock tended, the clothes laundered, and her father fed. He would solemnly intone to her, "As St. Augustine once said, Belle, The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page."
And she would solemnly nod, with her dark eyes wide and attentive. "Yes, Monsieur Relieu." In this way the love of travel as well as reading was instilled into her.
He would occasionally take Maurice aside. "You know, my friend, the technology now exists for capturing images," he said slyly, referring to the infant science of photography. "It's already possible to partake of great art and architecture from the confines of little bookshops in little villages. Who knows? Perhaps the means will soon be at hand for capturing sound and movement. Then our little Belle could listen to great symphonies or watch great performances without the difficulty and expense of traveling to Paris, or Berlin, or Rome."
And the imagination of Maurice would be fired. "Yes…yes…I must look into that…" he would say, with a far-off look in his eyes.
to be continued
A / N
I've been at this story for a couple years now. And, like all my stories, it snowballs. Things happen when I start researching background for stories; the plot bunny procreates. The rest of you fan-writers…y'all know what I mean.
I needed a last name for Belle and Maurice. Subscribing as I do to the naming scheme of fictional characters based on a play on words, I played around with the word "invent" and its synonyms. I found that "fabricateur" was the French word for "fabricator", which can mean "inventor" or "forger" as well as "liar". Googling, I found that "Bricateur" is a family name. I needed to check with a French speaker to make sure it did not have any risqué or hidden meanings. I am beholden to a fellow blogger at Xanga for his input.
I wanted a name for the bookseller according to the naming scheme for the characters of the Beast's castle, which reflects their trait(s), . I googled the parts of a book; cover, title page, binding; nothing seemed to suggest itself. I found the Wikipedia article on the vocation of bookbinding. It struck a chord. I decided to make our bookseller a bookbinder as well. I went to Google Translate to get some ideas.
"Reliure" is the French word for "bookbinding" and "relieur" is the French word for "bookbinder". And that word "relieur" bore a resemblance to the name of a famous Frenchman, Cardinal Richelieu. I struck the last letter off the word. I added the first name "Auguste" because I like it.
Good ol' Google and Wikipedia…the fan-writer's friends.
The more I looked at Auguste Relieu, the more I came to love and admire him…as the reader can tell. And the story of Charlotte Corday and Auguste's ancestor, Alexandre Relieu…that's forthcoming, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.