Treasure hunt story
Treasure hunt story is a novella by Werner Bergengruen that appeared in Gütersloh in 1942.
Man looks for homes, even if it were in hell.
time and place
The novella is from 1815 to 1855 in France.
content
Company commander Bicorne, a loser at Waterloo , inherits a house and a little money in Andilly-les-Prés. Bicorne makes no secret of his loyalty to the emperor . The Bonapartist stands alone. The villagers, royally minded, play a trick on the snooty imperial worshiper . The miller Eustache Labrande wants to lease the gamekeeper field, an overgrown plot of land that had to be given up by aristocratic owners in 1789 . The miller wants Bicorne to dig up the field for him, which is now overgrown with bushes. So the miller tells Bicorne in a letter allegedly written by a Bonapartist from prison that a treasure is buried in the gamekeeper field. Bicorne falls for it, digs and finds treasure. The treasure chest, full of Louis d'or gold coins and jewelry, was probably buried by the noble owners in 1789.
The niece, a distant relative of the miller who, orphaned, has found shelter in the mill, warns Bicorne of further digs and lets the treasure digger into the prank of the villagers. Bicorne, the successful digger, pours out laughing. He marries the niece. Under the July Monarchy and then in the Second Empire , Bicorne made it to a general. One of the couple's children becomes the captain of Sebastopol .
literature
- source
- Werner Bergengruen: Treasure hunt story. Rainer Wunderlich Verlag, Tübingen et al. 1947, (5th edition, ibid 1952).
- Secondary literature
- Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): Word and poetry as a place of refuge in difficult times. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1816-7 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. Biographical and bibliographical concise dictionary based on authors and anonymous works. German authors. A – Z. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 50.