The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

Marcel Verdier: Self, pharmacist in Clermont-Ferrand

Quotes 

• Marcel Verdier, Pharmacist : In 1939, I was 27 years old. I was the father of a large family, so I hadn't been sent to the front. The front was the Maginot Line. I'd been sent to Monferrand, near Clermont, and my wife's dairywoman, Mrs. Michel, had criticized me for not going to the front. So after the rout, I told her that there was no point in me going to the front, since the front came to me.

  Verdier Family Member : Is there anything other than courage in the Resistance?

  Marcel Verdier, Pharmacist : Of course. But the two emotions I experienced the most frequently were sorrow and pity.

• Marcel Verdier, Pharmacist : The children who were born during that time, between 1942 and 1944, should have suffered from rickets, and I say this as a doctor. In our family, it was ironic. These young ladies have a brother, who is 27 years old, and was born in 1942. He's five foot nine! We fed him so much to avoid rickets that he turned into a giant. He's a great tennis player, an architect and a giant to boot.

• Interviewer : Are you what they call "a bourgeois" in a large provincial town?

  Marcel Verdier, Pharmacist : If being a bourgeois means eating properly, hunting in Sologne, having a hunting ground in Sanscion and in Sérye, and a son-in-law who owns Lake Montciniere, then I'm a bourgeois.

• Marcel Verdier, Pharmacist : I was a smoker, and it was awful not having cigarettes. It was a horrible situation. People would do anything, even steal. I got so desperate that I even rolled and smoked artichoke leaves.