About a death
A LITTLE MAN...
who has not grown up since met Louis Feuillade twenty years ago

The newspapers announced these days the death of Louis Feuillade, the creator of the cine-novel. There is someone in Lille, who knew Louis Feuillade and worked with him. He is not originally from Lille but he is someone who, having been born in Tulle in Corrèze, and having since traveled a lot, happened to pass through Lille several times and is currently living there.
His name is known: he was often on the bill of music halls. He is very loved and very applauded. His silhouette is even more known, because it cannot, despite his volume, go unnoticed.
It is Marval-le-Nain, born Léonard Val, some 39 years ago. This brave little man, from a misfortune in life, made the talent of his own; from what aroused laughter, he made applause; from his native misfortune, he made his reason for living and, like a good philosopher, drew good from evil. Marval can be seen in the streets of Lille. His height is not tall, but he carries it straight and does not lose an inch.
He juggles with a light cane... which rises quickly on the mockers, he climbs cheerfully on the benches of the cafés. He even knows how to grab his glass very briskly between two fingers at the bar. Almost forty years old, and not a gray hair. His whole little person gives off a positive air of assurance; this little man whom nature wanted to put in her pocket, has on the contrary put people and crowds in his pocket.
He has, when talking, a very resolute way of turning his two short hands against each other; you don't fool him" he is ready to talk with anyone: music hall director, businessman. or journalist. He has a little tour of Europe behind him. And the woman he found a few years ago, just like him, in Antwerp, has her little tour of the world behind her.
It is precisely to Louis Feuillade that Marval's beginnings go back. While the creator of the cine-novel was a journalist, he was his scribe at the newspaper "La Tomate", which was born from an avalanche of tomatoes that the late Combes suffered in Marseille.
Marval was seventeen at that time. and 1 m. 10. The newspaper died. Marval was eighteen, and still 1 m. 10. He entered, near Paris, a circus... that is to say a caravan, where he was at the same time clown, sweeper, cook. He had 15 francs a month, and was not always paid. But he was careful to ask for advances...
Better days came, the Folles Marigny and the Nouveau Cirque. In the meantime, Marval was touched by the new grace of the film. He saw Louis Feuillade again with whom he filmed Le jugement d'un bouffon. He played the role of the jester again, in Marion Delorme.

The war. Marval conquers his independence. He creates a number and goes through the music halls.
That is how he is in Lille. It is from there that he writes to us to ask us to pass on to the family of Louis Feuillade, whose address he does not know, his moving memory.
Very willingly.
But Feuillade's memory would certainly not have been satisfied, if, on this occasion, we had not devoted a few lines to his pupil, to this brave little man who carries under his tiny size, an intelligence and a good heart.
How proudly he carries that small, determined forehead and those straight eyes that have imposed him on life and the crowds.
Intelligence, work and philosophy!

J. G