Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Bill Nye
Last Sunday afternoon my companion and I decided to succumb to wanderlust and drive through the SW French countryside. July is a spectacular month for traveling throughout the départment of the Gers because sunflowers are in bloom everywhere. We found ourselves a few kilometers from the 13th century, fortified village of Larresingle when I saw a sign for Château de Beaumont.
“Let’s go there!”, I said. I had picked up a flyer for a concert here and thought it might be perfect for one of my French Country Adventure tours next year. I turned off the road and parked outside the Château’s crumbing stone gateposts. We walked onto the grounds. To the right we saw this formal garden, most likely the castle’s original entrance.
To the left were huge red doors set into the castle’s massive outer wall. The property seemed deserted until we heard a tractor in the distance coming closer. My companion followed the sound and returned alongside the man on the tractor. He shut off his machine, came towards me with an outstretched hand and we conversed in French. He said, “My name is Philippe. I am the gardener and caretaker of Château de Beaumont. Who are you?” I replied that I was an American living in the small village of Ayzieu about a half hour away, I was a writer and photographer for the British magazines France Today and Bonjour Paris, and I had a flyer, which I pulled out of my camera bag, for the concert called, A Summer in Gascony with Eve Ruggieri. “I do not know the village of Ayzieu.”, Philippe said, “I came from the north to take care of this beautiful property. Would you like to see the Château? I can’t show you the private quarters, but I’d be happy to show you the gardens.” I caught my breath and said, “That would be incredible! Really…you can show us the Château?” Philippe’s answer was to walk back to his tractor and return with an enormous key.
We followed Philippe over a small bridge which arched over the castle’s water-filled moat. Peering over the edge we saw a metal sculpture of a crocodile which Pierre said was made by Eve Ruggierei’s husband, sculptor Rachid Khimoune, as were all of the other amazing sculptures around the grounds.
Once inside the emerald green heart of the circular garden we felt as though we’d been sprinkled with fairy dust.
We followed the unassuming, kindhearted Philippe around while he told us of the Chateau’s history. It was first mentioned in a written account dated 1266, then not again until i1605 when it was renovated by Pierre Souffron, master architect for the city of Auch.
From 1640 until 1691 it was owned by Louis Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, a French nobleman most notable for being the husband of Louis XIV’s mistress, Madame de Montespan.
Philippe told us the concert, which we had missed by a few days, was wonderful. He said Madame Ruggieri, the former host of the radio show, Music of the Heart, engaged a mezzo soprano, tenor and pianist to perform in the grand gallery upstairs, and afterwards a thousand candles illuminated dinner served in the gardens. My companion and I turned to each other and said at the same time, “Next year!”
We thanked Philippe profusely for the incredible tour and left him to continue mowing the lawns. My companion said, “That was unbelievably spectacular! Louis XIV’s mistress no less! Sue, you have the uncanny ability to be at the right place at the right time. We could have gone anywhere today, but we ended up here and the doors magically opened, as they so often do for you.”
