The small village of Venelles evokes, says the Fire, when you cross it, the pleasant memory of one of those pretty stories of the South, too beautiful to be believed true and yet true, that Paul Arène, Roumanille or Daudet excelled in telling.
Like many villages perched high on the peaks, Venelles, for years, had begun to swarm: a good number of its inhabitants, more sensitive to the conveniences of the plain than to the beautiful view of the Durance valley that the ancestral rock offered them, left the discomfort of their dilapidated homes to build a new home on the edge of the main road. The earthquake of 1909 accentuated the movement to the point that it was decided to rebuild the church, badly cracked by the seismic shock, not in its old place but in the middle of the new agglomeration.
Until then, for their convenience, the inhabitants of the hamlet, anxious, at the same time, not to live without religion and to save their shoes and their time, had become Protestants by going down to the plain. When they had the church, they became Catholics again en masse.
But, on the other hand, the inhabitants of the upper village took the exodus from the sanctuary very badly. Wanting to make a splash, they called a rabbi and wanted to become Jews. This sensible man laughed in their faces and told them that they were too bad Christians to make good children of Israel. In desperation, they therefore took in the pastor who had remained unemployed and replaced the sermon with preaching |
