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To resum my first novel

This is the short story of Antoine's life. It's not detailed because it's difficult tofocus a long life in just a few minutes of reading.

On January 17th 1868, a boy named Antoine, who was destined to be a very special person, was born into a poor family - as were most families in Gignac at that time. At the age of seven, Antoine began to work as a shepherd for Dublanche in Puy-Lambert, then for Laval at the Red Houses and later at La Cisque.
However, as time passed, he became increasingly disatisfied with his wages - only five crowns for a week's work! He thought it was about time he got paid what he was worth. Then he got a job working on the construction of Brive-Souillac railway line. At C. he learntthe trade of tailor and later he became a shoemaker at Larche.
One day, Antoine was collecting the droppings from his sheep for the nuns' garden. To thank him, the nuns offered Antoine either a catechism book or 12 cents. The boy  didn't find the choice difficult and put the small coin in his pocket.
At nineteen, with a pathetic future ahead of him, the only answer to his problems suddenly appeared to him : it was America. Why ?  Because he had learned in a newspaper that people there, would pay him five times as much for the heels of the shoes he made.

So one day, he left their home, with one of his four brothers, who was called Jean (Jean-Bazile). Jean was only seventeen years old and neither of the two brothers spoke English, just a little French; they had only a very vague idea of ​​what America was. When their father asked
 them, "Do you know where America is? ", Antoine replied:" the boat will take us there "!
The boys won the prize for their embarkation in "Havre" by committing themselves as ship's boys. Antoine had kept his shoemaker's tools and had also reseeded the crew's shoes!
After two weeks at sea, the ship arrived in New York. Antoine and Jean discovered the Statue of Liberty that France had just offered to  America. As the two boys gazed at its silhouette from the railing, a ball of anguish followed them, perhaps they had been wrong to come here, to leave so far behind them, the place where they were born, the world. that they knew?
They found themselves wandering along an avenue they didn't know, in an area that looked very run down and dirty. The houses were so ugly that everyone thought they made you sick. Was it really New York? It was raining. A month earlier, it was raining in Gignac, it rains as frequently in Quercy as in America, but in their farm The Chazal, the rain smelled like the scent of cut hay. Antoine forced himself to come back to reality, there were decisions to be made. Of the 500 francs his parents had given him, he had very little left. For her father it was a fortune and before that they had said to them: "If you can't arrive with it to America, don't bother to come back because I won't have any more money to give you. brothers needed to find work quickly. They were ready for anything. Winter was approaching when they found a  work for a longer period,
on a farm for $ 8 a month. When the winter was over, they made bricks and chopped wood in the Forest.There, as Antoine and Jean-Bazile worked for different people, they lost all contact with each other. How could each seek the other in such a vast country whose language they did not know how to speak.
Two years passed before the two brothers were together again. However, this meeting was to be short-lived because Jean-Bazile had to fall seriously ill. He died very young a few years later, of tuberculosis.
As for Antoine, he suffered a lot, because of the harsh winters he endured as a lumberjack in the mountains of Connecticut. One day, his attention was caught by pamphlets praising the Californian climate and saying that some vineyard owners were looking for day laborers. One night he boarded a train and left the frozen fog of the East forever. It took him several days to cross the 4000 kilometers separating New York from San Francisco and Antoine had only bread and cheese to survive but he remained intrepid.
Now that this 19 years old young man had let go of his past, left poverty to embark on an extraordinary journey, a heart full of ambition, he was not easily discouraged, nothing was to stop him from now on.
It was then on December 24, 1889 that Antoine arrived in San Francisco. His first problem was finding accommodation with only five dollars left in his pocket. Fortunately, he quickly found work on a farm that was by no means unpleasant and he managed to save money. Then he decided that his brothers Julien and Alex could join him.

It had been seven years since Antoine had seen his parents and his older brother who ran the farm. In 1894, Antoine returned to Gignac. The closer he got to his native village, the faster his heart beat. His mind very quickly began to conjure up images of the barren, poor road leading to the mill. These images seemed as real to him as if he was actually there. His heart sank with emotion as he remembered his sister Angeline, the eldest of the children, who entered the convent at the age of fifteen and who had just died.

But the dream ceased. The last kilometers flew like a dream. He was at Gignac station. While Antoine followed the real path that led to the farm, he contemplated his old universe, each detail of which awakened memories in him. His family was extremely surprised to see him because he had not announced his visit. they were filled with joy and pride when they saw all the money their son offered them.
While Antoine was in France, he took the opportunity to get married, since he had decided to marry a french woman rather than an american . finally, his parents found a family called Pau. The father said to them: " I have seven daughters to feed, your son can choose one of them. Antoine chose Julienne and then brought his young wife back to San Francisco.
In California, he found a job in a tannery, but now that he was married, he needed to build a secure future where money would be the watch word. He tried to think of an enterprise in which he could also involve Julienne. Antoine then paid 1200 dollars for an unpretentious hotel with twenty-five rooms. He quickly realized that he had
finally found his bearings. Throughout his life, he then bought and sold up to fifty hotels, both in America and in Brive. he bailed out struggling hotels and resold them with a profit. He managed to convince about twenty relatives, neighbors and friends to join him in San Francisco. A few came and mingled with the waves of emigrants which invaded America. For them, Antoine was a real providence.

However, life has not always been easy. On April 16, 1906, an earthquake occurred in San Francisco. The broken gas pipes burst causing fires that ravaged almost the 
entire city. Blocks of houses were dynamited to prevent the fire from spreading. Antoine's hotel, the “Grand southern”, was not spared. Consequently, Antoine and his
 brothers were ruined like many other people in San Francisco. They had to start all over again.



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With all the money they had managed to save from the disaster, they rented a building in Oakland, on the other side of the bay and converted it into a makeshift hotel, using the straw mattresses and the blankets that had been distributed to the refugees. Throughout the rebuilding of San Francisco the hotel was always full.
They lived happy days, as the Arlington hotel its two hundred bedrooms attests, but they also had to cope with the economic depression of 1929.
The brothers took risk and overcame all the difficulties, but still on a personal level, they had to face tragedies. In 1914 Antoine's daughter Lea fell seriously ill with tuberculosis and died, at the tender age of sixteen. He also lost his son Ferdinand, his wife Julienne, and his second wife who was also his cousin. They left him alone with the problem of bringing up their nine-years old daughter...
This succession of deaths had a great impact on Antoine's life. Undauted however, he returned to Brive to find himself a third wife. But this time we were in 1939 and Antoine was 71 years old; his wife was about forty years younger than him.
At the age of ninety-two, Antoine set out for a last pilgrimage to the country of his ancestors. He had never forgotten Gignac, where his brother Julien had already returned to die. Alex would also  die soon. But Antoine was to live another ten years in San Francisco. Every evening he went out for a walk to get some fresh air. In front of his hotel, and when there were storms he found himself considering another greater storm, the storm of life - the dead within his family, the cut and thrust of the businessworld and his losses and gains at the casino.
And then, on a hot July night, he no longer saw the wooden houses on the tenement blocks of San Francisco; instead, he saw an old woman - his mother - , an arid chalky hillock with his  stunted scattered oaks hung on, and the ewes that were constantly cropping the sparse grass. A violent pain spread through his head and all of a sudden he collapsed, just like the corn sheaves used to collapse under his father's sickle, he was in his hundred and third year .






Creation date : 04/01/2008 . 08:20
Last update : 14/03/2014 . 20:48
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