Letters from My Windmill

by Alphonse Daudet

MASTER-MILLER CORNILLE'S SECRET

Francet Mamaï, an aging fife player, who occasionally passes the evening hours drinking sweet wine with me, recently told me about a little drama which unfolded in the village near my windmill some twenty years ago. The fellow's tale was quite touching and I'll try to tell it to you as I heard it.

For a moment, think of yourself sitting next to a flagon of sweet-smelling wine, listening to the old fife player giving forth.

"Our land, my dear monsieur, hasn't always been the dead and alive place it is today. In the old days, it was a great milling centre, serving the farmers from many kilometres around, who brought their wheat here to be ground into flour. The village was surrounded by hills covered in windmills. On every side, above the pine trees, sails, turning in the mistral, filled the landscape, and an assortment of small, sack-laden donkeys trudged up and down the paths. Day after day it was really good to hear the crack of the whips, the snap of the sails, and the miller's men's prodding, "Gee-up"…. On Sundays, we used to go up to the windmills in droves, and the millers thanked us with Muscat wine. The miller's wives looked as pretty as pictures with their lace shawls and gold crosses. I took my fife, of course, and we farandoled the night away. Those windmills, mark me, were the heart and soul of our world.

"Then, some Parisians came up with the unfortunate idea of establishing a new steam flour mill on the Tarascon Road. People soon began sending their wheat to the factory and the poor wind-millers started to lose their living. For a while they tried to fight back, but steam was the coming thing, and it eventually finished them off. One by one, they had to close down…. No more dear little donkeys; no more Muscat! and no more farandoling!… The millers' wives were selling their gold crosses to help make ends meet…. The mistral might just as well not have bothered for all the turning the windmills did…. Then, one day, the commune ordered the destruction of all the run-down windmills and the land was used to plant vines and olive trees.

"Even during of all this demolition, one windmill had prevailed and managed to keep going, and was still bravely turning on, right under the mill factors' noses. It was Master-Miller Cornille's mill; yes, this actual one we're chewing the fat in right now."

* * * * *

"Cornille was an old miller, who had lived and breathed flour for sixty years, and loved his milling above all other things. The opening of the factories had enraged him to distraction. For a whole week, he was stirring up the locals in the village, and screaming that the mill factories would poison the whole of Provence with their flour. "Don't have anything to do with them," he said, "Those thieves use steam, the devil's own wind, while I work with the very breath of God, the tramontana and the mistral." He was using all manner of fine words in praise of windmills. But nobody was listening.

"From then on, the raving old man just shut himself away in his windmill and lived alone like a caged animal. He didn't even want Vivette, his fifteen year old grand daughter, around. She only had her grandfather to depend on since the death of her parents, so the poor little thing had to earn her living from any farm needing help with the harvest, the silk-worms, or the olive picking. And yet, her grandfather still displayed all the signs of loving Vivette, and he would often walk in the midday sun to see her in the farm where she was working, and he would spend many hours watching her, and breaking his heart….

"People thought that the old miller was simply being miserly in sending Vivette away. In their opinion, it was utterly shameful to let his grand-daughter trail from farm to farm, running the risk that the supervisors would bully and abuse her and that she would suffer all the usual horrors of child labour. Cornille, who had once been respected, now roamed the streets like a gypsy; bare-footed, with a hole in his hat, and his breeches in shreds…. In fact, when he went to mass on Sundays, we, his own generation, were ashamed of him, and he sensed this to the point that he wouldn't come and sit in the front pews with us. He always sat by the font at the back of the church with the parish poor."

* * * * *

"There was something mysterious about Cornille's life. For some time, nobody in the village had brought him any wheat, and yet his windmill's sails kept on turning. In the evenings, the old miller could be seen on the pathways, driving his flour-sack laden mule along.

—Good evening, Master-Miller Cornille! the peasants called over to him; Everything alright, then?

—Oh yes, lads, the old fellow replied cheerily. Thank God, there's no shortage of work for me."

"If you asked him where the work was coming from, he would put a finger to his mouth and reply with great seriousness: "Keep it under your hat! It's for export." You could never get anything more than that out of him.

"You daren't even think about poking your nose inside the windmill.
Even little Vivette wouldn't go in there.

"The door was always shut when you passed by, the huge sails were always turning, the old donkey was grazing on the mill's apron, and a starved-looking cat was sunning itself on the windowsill, and eying you viciously.

"All this gave it an air of mystery causing much gossip. Each person had his own version of Cornille's secret, but the general view was that there were more sacks of money than sacks of flour in the windmill.

"Eventually, though, everything was revealed. Listen to this:

"One day, playing my fife at the youngsters dance, I noticed that the eldest of my boys and little Vivette had fallen in love. Deep down, I was not sorry; after all, Cornille was a respected name in our village, and then again, it had pleased me to see this pretty little bundle of fluff, Vivette, skipping around the house. But, as our lovers had lots of opportunities to be alone together, I wanted to put the affair on a proper footing at once, for fear of accidents, so I went up to the windmill to have a few words with her grandfather…. But, oh, the old devil! You wouldn't credit the manner of his welcome! I couldn't get him to open the door. I told him through the keyhole that my intentions were good, and meanwhile, that damned starved-looking cat was spitting like anything above my head.

"The old man cut me short and told me, unfairly, to get back to my flute playing, and that if I was in such a hurry to marry off my boy, I'd be better going to look for one of the factory girls. You can imagine how much these words made my blood boil, but, wisely, I was able to control myself, and left the old fool to his grinding. I went back to tell the children of my disappointment. The poor lambs couldn't believe it; and they asked me if they could go to speak to him. I couldn't refuse, and in a flash, the lovers went. When they arrived, Cornille had just left. The door was double locked, but he had left his ladder outside. The children immediately went in through the window to see what was inside this famous windmill….

"Amazingly, the milling room was empty. Not a single sack; not one grain of wheat. Not the least trace of flour on the walls or in the cobwebs. There wasn't even the good warm scent of crushed wheat which permeates windmills. The grinding machinery was covered in dust, and the starving cat was asleep on it.

"The room below had just the same air of misery and neglect: a pitiful bed, a few rags, a piece of bread on a step of the stairs, and notably, in one corner, three or four burst sacks with rubble and chalk spilling out.

"So—that was Cornille's secret! It was this plaster that was being moved by road in the evenings. All this, just to save the reputation of the windmill, to make people believe that flour was still being milled there. Poor windmill. Poor Cornille! The millers had finished the last real work a long time ago. The sails turned on, but the millstone didn't.

"The children returned tearfully and told me what they had seen. It broke my heart to hear them. I ran round to the neighbours straight away, explaining things very briefly, and we all agreed at once on what to do, which was to carry all the wheat we could lay our hands on up to Cornille's windmill. No sooner said than done. The whole village met up on the way and we arrived with a procession of donkeys loaded up with wheat, but this time the real thing.

"The windmill was open to the world…. In front of the door, crying, head in hands, sat Cornille on a sack of plaster. He had only just come back and noticed, that while he was away, his home had been invaded and his pathetic secret exposed.

—Poor, poor me, he said. I might as well be dead … the windmill has been shamed.

"Then sobbing bitter tears, he tried to say all sorts of consoling words to his windmill, as if it could hear him. Just then, the mules arrived on the apron and we all began to shout loudly as in the good old days of the millers:

—What ho there, in the windmill! What ho there, Monsieur Cornille!!

"And there they were, stacked together, sack upon sack of lovely golden grain, some spilling over onto the ground all around….

"Cornille, his eyes wide open, took some of the wheat into the palms of his old hands, crying and laughing at the same time:

—It's wheat! Dear Lord. Real wheat. Leave me to feast my eyes.

"Then, turning towards us, he said:

—I know why you've come back to me…. The mill factory owners are all thieves.

"We wanted to lift him shoulder high and take him triumphantly to the village:

—No, no my children, I must give my windmill something to go at first.
Think about it, for so long, it's had nothing to grind!

"We all had tears in our eyes as we saw the old man scampering from sack to sack, and emptying them into the millstone and watching as the fine flour was ground out onto the floor.

"It's fair to say that from then on, we never let the old miller run short of work. Then, one morning Master-Miller Cornille died, and the sails of our last working windmill turned for the very last time. Once he had gone, no one took his place. What could we do, monsieur? Everything comes to an end in this world, and we have to accept that the time for windmills has gone, along with the days of the horse-drawn barges on the Rhone, local parliaments, and floral jackets."