Jacques Salbigoton Quesné (1778-1859)

A French writer, Jacques Salbigoton Quesné was born in Pavilly in 1778 and died in St Germain en Laye in 1859. He joined the merchant navy at the age of 16 and suffered two shipwrecks in quick succession. After having been a notary's clerk and a merchant's clerk in Rouen, he settled in Paris in 1800 to devote himself to literature. For a time inspector of indirect taxes, then from 1831 to 1834 in charge of a Parisian bookshop in Brussels, he wrote many works, some of which were well known, but all his work then fell into oblivion.

In his confessions, he recounts the year spent in Grugny with the Leleu brothers who welcomed some college students into their home, which allows us to get to know the two brothers better, one a priest in Grugny, the other first justice of peace in the canton of Monville, then in Clères:

"The director's name was M. Leleu, the parish priest of the place, a small, round, fat, plump man, with a double story on his chin, a plump belly, a lover of fine dining, a connoisseur of delicate wines, and relying on his brother for the care of educating the pupils, an educated man, a great hunter, an excellent guest, and very fond of the game drawn from his hands. He had not a single hair on his head, and frequently spoke to us with his wig in his hand, a piquant situation, and not very likely to retain in the seriousness of schoolchildren, to whom the need of laughter is almost as necessary to existence as the air they breathe.

The hunter M. Leleu died a justice of peace of the canton of Monville (Seine-Inferior), at a very advanced age. So here I am in the village of Grugny, three leagues from my home, fairly well received, and I think, a little recommended. I learn my lessons with rare ease; one is astonished; I pass for a prodigy, and I dismay, by complete discouragement, all the pupils of my class, who, powerless to follow me, are content to watch the eagle soar to the skies. But how short this flight lasted! Having entrusted to my memory a supply of studies acquired at the Abbé Noel's, I knew by heart two-thirds of the syntax... but when it was necessary to learn the other part, as well as new lessons, the quiver exhausted, I could find no arrows to maintain my superiority over my adversaries; I fell from heaven, flying only from earth to earth, and still remaining uneasily their equal. Then the murmurs, the complaints, the reproaches, the threats of M. Leleu fell on my head like hail; In vain did I speak, explain myself, justify myself, invoke the testimony of my former master, I was not believed. Not very advanced in my studies, I left Grugny to enter the college of Pavilly. I was in fifth grade in Grugny, I repeated this class in middle school"

Information also on the harshness of the winter of 1788-1789, and the discomfort of the Leleu brothers' board:

"The winter of 1788 to 1789, as we know, was extraordinarily harsh. We took our meals at the presbytery; but when we had to leave it at nine o'clock in the evening, cross a long courtyard, go up to our rooms, which were nothing but badly closed attics, God! How cold it is for little members like ours, heated during the day to perspiration by a stove! I remember that at supper the walls of the refectory offered in a multitude of points the brilliance of diamonds. The holes made in the ice of the pools were several feet thick, and they were obliged to break it several times during the day. To this unheard-of cold in our climates was added the scarcity of grain. Unfortunates, and sometimes thieves, roamed the countryside in the darkness, begging for bread, with haggard eyes and threats in their mouths. They were called poor at night."