The message was found a few days ago by another worker, Victorien Coille, by chance, while he was working on the restoration of the Sainte-Croix-de-Jerusalem chapel, in Dijon, on the site of the City of gastronomy. As he explains every day The Public Good, he was making a bleeding in a wall, that is to say making a furrow between the stones, when one of them moved. So he took it out and found a sheet neatly folded in six underneath. A letter signed Nicolas Godard and dated August 10, 1856.
City of gastronomy in #Dijon : a document dated 1856 found https://t.co/os9iApD94l pic.twitter.com/XEISTjV0UX
– The Public Good ️ (@Lebienpublic) January 19, 2021
“In this chapel under repair, worked the Sieur Godard, native of Moloy, canton of Is-sur-Tille.” He explains that he is a plasterer craftsman, and that before that, at the age of 18, he participated in the Crimean campaign as a soldier, sailor on the steam frigate L’Orinoco. He also gives the names of his comrades on the site, for posterity, for those who would like to come across his letter one day. Since in this trade, it is the tradition to leave a trace of its passage. But often the messages are never found, or fall apart and disappear with the humidity and the work of the years. His held, and makes us live a rare trip, in the France of Napoleon III.
At the time these letters are written, the greatest misery reigns in Dijon.
Nicolas Godard in 1856
in his handwritten letter
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What was happening in 1856? Half of the hexagon was devastated by torrential rains and deadly floods in Lyon, Avignon, Tours, Arles, Tarascon and the Crimean War took with it for the first three months of the year 40,000 soldiers, mainly dead from the typhus and cholera. Except… Nicolas Godard, returned to Côte-d’Or and reconverted as a worker. “At the time when these letters are written, the greatest misery reigns in Dijon“, he said before quoting a line from Jean Racine: “Whoever puts a brake on the fury of the waves, also knows the wicked to stop plots.”
Why this verse taken fromAthalie ? Maybe in reference to the floods? To the exasperation of the population at the authoritarianism of the emperor? We will not know more, still it is that the writing is perfect, the pen well readable. One could doubt the originality of the document, but the mayor’s archives service authenticated it and even found the birth certificate of Sieur Godard, born in 1838.
Funny feeling to have news from another age, enough to make you dizzy: what will those who will come after us do? How will they look at our time, our deeds and gestures? Where will we be in 165 years, in 2186?
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