Gabriel Chevallier in Vaux-en-Beaujolais (69), Rhône (69)

The writer and artist Gabriel Chevallier (1885-1969) was born in Lyon, although it was the much smaller Vaux-en-Beaujolais which inspired his greatest success, Clochemerle, which was originally published in 1934. It in turn inspired a film and a television series, and as you enter Vaux you find that it also has another name: Clochemerle, of course. Prominent in the village is a house with murals of some of a number of characters in the book: it was designed by the A. Fresco company after illustrations by Albert Dubout, which appeared in the 1945 edition of the novel. Included are a couple of lovers near the cuckolded butcher (wearing stag horns); the curé and his maid; the chemist; Chevalier and Dubout at a window; the baron and a local solicitor; the Café Torbayan drunkards celebrating the beaujolais nouveau; the village band; the punished; etc.  Also prominent in the square is a representation of the village pissotière. The mock heraldic device on the building is a rebus: it shows a bell (cloche) and two blackbirds (merles) perched on a pissotière.