Dear Eagle’s Talons
This just arrived. I got it online. It says:
Dear Eagle’s Talons,
We await your arrival with impatience. Are you enjoying yourself? Goodbye my dear Eagle’s Talons. Hug Jeanne for me. Your affectionate cousin, Lotus Flower.
It was sent in the first quarter of the 20th century from Mazamet to Mlle. Dautheville at the Château de Mazelières near Nérac. The château has a(n award winning) vineyard and now is also a hotel.
My Mazamet 
Wonderful handwriting on the address side of the card. 🙂
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Eagle Talons? That’s me … for my razor sharp wit! Oh, I forgot, I hadn’t been born then, so that Eagle’s Talons is an imposteur! Mon Dieu!
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I can never read writing like that, as pretty as it is, which gives me an added challenge at translating things! I love the “eagle talons” – sounds kind of sexy!
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My great grandmother was born in 1900 and I spent a lot of time with her as a child, so I had good practice in deciphering that precise style of French calligraphy.
Eagle talons, lotus blossom… I think it’s some sort of secret lesbian code! 😀
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Voila! A mystery, Pinky. Can you dig deeper? Fate really has given you the job of Historian of Mazamet. Or at least of no. 42. 🙂
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Not too much deeper, I think. I know the Dautheville were a prominent Huguenot family, so that’s probably the connection to the town.
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Huguenots? Oh…were they killed off during the purges? I know whole communities were decimated. 😦
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The Huguenots were the Protestants- and yes many were decimated. Mazamet was created when the Protestant village up the mountain was destroyed by the Catholics.
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@ Pinky. Ah, so the survivors started again in Mazamet. I imagine they would have had to keep their faith a secret to avoid more bloodshed. That is such a fascinating link to the past.
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Ooops, sorry, I misspoke. Mazamet was created after the Cathar persecution in the 1200’s. It was then attacked in the wars of religion and that was the Huguenot persecution…
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Aaah. Okay. Still, it sounds as if your quiet little backwater was part of centuries of turmoil.
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Unfortunately ‘Lotus Flower’ conjures up sessions of ‘Round the Horne’…
I wonder what the postman made of the card.
Most of my older French friends sent their postcards encased in envelopes to avoid the eye of the facteur, not to speak of the postmistress…
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This town is the ultimate in prim and proper- I imagine it must have been a scandal 🙂
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With a bit of luck! Something to enliven the winter.months as gossip spread from kitchen to kitchen and finally made it into the ‘family’ part of the house via the indiscretions of a lady’s maid…at which point the ‘at homes’ would have been buzzing!
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