I inherited the Villa Duendelle quite unexpectedly one winter. An icy wind from the Pyrenees had carried off my uncle Jean-Pierre in the rosy twilight of his years and to the astonishment of myself and much of my extended family: the lawyer opening the will found that Jean-Pierre had left his entire house and estate to me. I was only one of four sons and not the eldest, living hundreds of miles away, and none of us had seen very much of our uncle for the previous two decades, not since we were children. It was incomprehensible.