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Soyuzmultfilm
Puppet Film Division

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Man must understand that he is
the creator and master of the world,

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that he bears the responsibility
for all the world's misfortunes,

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and that to him belongs the glory
for all the good there is in life.

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(From a letter by Maxim Gorky
to Romain Rolland)

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The Handyman from Clamecy

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Based on Romain Rolland's novella
"Colas Breugnon"

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Screenplay by Aleksey Simukov

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Directed by Vadim Kurchevsky

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Art Director
Teodor Tezhik

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Cinematographers: Ilya Minkovetsky,
Teodor Bunimovich, Yan Topper

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Animators:
Maya Buzinova, Natalya Dabizha,
Iosif Douksha.

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Composer
Mikhail Meyerovich

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Sound Engineer Vladimir Kutuzov
Montage Nadezhda Treshcheva

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Script Editor
Raisa Frichinskaya

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Narrated by
Aleksey Konsovsky

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Artistic Staff: Roman Gurov, Pavel Gusev,
Vladimir Abakumov, Margarita Chesnokova,
Liliana Lyutinskaya, Valentin Ladygin

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Artistic Staff: Oleg Masainov,
Galina Gettinger, Svetlana Znamenskaya,
Vladimir Alisov, Pavel Lesin.

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Production Director
Natan Bitman

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I know not why, my friends,
it brings me such pleasure

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to drink deep from the full cup
of old memories in my heart.

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For idle daydreams are not for me, no.

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I tell only of what I saw,
what I said, and what I did.

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I am Colas, nicknamed Breugnon.

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An old sparrow of Burgundian blood,
vast in spirit and in belly.

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My wife, my treasure,
the virtue of our house.

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She often infuriates me.

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But I am not so foolish as to let
her words grieve me even a penny's worth.

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She reproaches me for having a sweet
tooth and being far too fond of revelry.

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I truly do love all good things.

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A good table, good wine,

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fine, fleshy joys,

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and those one finds in dreams.

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I am eternally hungry;

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my mouth fairly waters before the feast
spread for me by the earth and the sun.

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How good it is to live in this land!

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The earth is good.
The one upon which I was created,

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and upon which I live.

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I am of the Brotherhood of Saint Anne,

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that is to say, a carpenter.

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Everything here was made
with my own hands.

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What could be better
than the joy of a steady hand,

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of clever fingers from which
a fragile work of art emerges?

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Ah, my granddaughter!
A sly little fox.

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The moment she sees me,
she runs to meet me.

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She knows I always have
a basket full of tall tales.

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She loves them no less than I do.

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It is good to have tools in hand—
to saw, to plane, to drill.

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To wake a sleeping beauty,

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one need only, like a lover,
penetrate the depths of the wood.

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How many forms slumber in the wood,
lurking and concealed.

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I look at them,
and my youth is reborn.

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It was good to be twenty.

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Women in those days
had breasts more beautiful and full.

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And men had their hearts
where they belonged. And the rest, too.

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They don't make people
from such wood anymore.

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My Little Weasel, where are you now?

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It has been so many years
since I saw you.

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What remains of your
nimble little face,

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of the sly little grimace of my Weasel?

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Now there is no longer cause to fear

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that you will gnaw at my heart
with your sharp little teeth.

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But in the old days, how well
they knew how to laugh and bite.

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Once—it was some thirty-five years
after our last meeting—

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I finally saw her again.

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She was driving a donkey
and shouting across the whole street.

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I said: "of all the women in the world,

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I would know you with my eyes closed."

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"Breugnon," she said,
"you are the same madcap as ever."

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And I looked at her...

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My breath was taken away,
and I could not utter a word.

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And suddenly she said: "you know,
I loved you back then."

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Loved me...

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And I thought she
was mocking me.

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Ah, foolish youth.

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How good it is to think
that I was once so foolish.

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How it refreshes the heart.

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"Kiss me," she asked.

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When I touched her old cheeks,

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my eyes stung
with the urge to weep.

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And Little Weasel said to me: "Prickly."

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But then I heard my old woman's voice.

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She was waving her arms and shouting
that I was a loafer and a drunkard.

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And that I should hurry with the order
for the Lord Duke—

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the men from His Grace had come.

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Yes, yes, yes, yes... They say truly:
"take a wife, and forget the quiet life."

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Let her drone on with her little song,
and I shall drone on with mine.

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Sing on, my beauty.

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To your health.

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What's that?

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What's that?

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Is our friend the Curé
quarreling with his parishioners again?

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"Breugnon, do you hear?" he shouted,

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"These loafers are always
asking God for something.

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Every day they pester me and
the Lord with their fancies.

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One wants a bit of sun for the fields,

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another wants the clouds dispersed—
the wheat must be cut.

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Now it's these caterpillars
and beetles."

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I was amused by their dispute.

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Then we raised our glasses.

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The Curé, of course, to the Lord God,

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and I—to common sense.

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But the parishioners would not be
stilled, and demanded their shepherd.

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"Vagabonds!" shouted the Curé, "I serve
God, not you, children of the devil."

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"Yes..." I said,
"there is no trade more wretched

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than instilling God's truths
into their thick-skinned skulls."

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It was a sin to stay indoors
on such a morning.

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And I set off into the forest with
my granddaughter and my apprentice.

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I needed a piece of wood,
supple and dense.

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I never get tired of running my
hands over every piece I find.

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To me, wood is dearer than a woman.

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To each his own passion.

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Occupied with my work,

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I did not notice
the horsemen approaching us.

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They were the men
of our Duke de Nevers.

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They set upon us
as if we were brigands,

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claiming that we were trespassing
upon their master's property.

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We knew that this land
belonged to him.

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But until quite recently,
in the time of his late father,

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we had walked these roads freely.

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I tried to explain
to this iron-clad blockhead

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that for 300 years our grandfathers
and great-grandfathers

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had grazed goats here, mowed the grass,
and gathered firewood.

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But he would listen to nothing.

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Coming to my senses, I decided to go
to the castle of His Grace,

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to seek justice.

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Over a quarter-century,
many of my works had gathered there.

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They were lonely and uneasy there,
my children.

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The woodwork was damaged and cracked.

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Yes, our young Duke
is not a patch on the old one.

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And I realized I had come in vain.

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"Do you not know," he said, "that
in Clamecy everything belongs to me.

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The land, the forest, even you yourself
with your wooden trinkets,

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which I buy from you."

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Well, what could I answer to that?
Everyone around me was laughing.

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And he began to mock me, shooting
my dear little ones with an arquebus.

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I would have let myself be whipped
for any of those wooden figures,

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brought to life by my fingers.

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For man is nothing;
hallowed is his creation.

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A triple murderer is he
who kills a thought.

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But then something happened

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that neither the Duke nor his
drunken loafers could have foreseen.

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One of them, wheezing and writhing
in convulsions, rolled to my feet.

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"What is wrong with him?"
asked the Duke.

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"Your Grace, a marksman more accurate
than you has been found," I said to him.

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"Who is it, who?"
"The Plague. The Plague, Your Grace!"

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Driven mad by fear
of the plague and death,

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people lost
the last of their common sense.

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They burned the houses of
both the sick and the healthy.

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Others hid in their burrows,

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boarding up the windows,
afraid to meet one another.

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I felt that my song was sung.

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A fever burned within me.

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My side was aching, and my insides
were being turned out.

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"O Lord," I groaned, "why do you
punish a harmless man

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who has done nothing to you?
Why?"

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Then I realized
that He did not hear me,

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and that I was wasting my time.

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I know not how long
I lay in that shed,

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only that when I stood on my feet
and went out to breathe the fresh air,

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I did not recognize Clamecy.

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And then I shouted to the people:
"this cannot go on!

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Come out!
We must stay together!

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Or have your trousers been taken,
that you sit in your rooms?"

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And I won the day.
We were together again.

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Yes, they say truly: trouble comes to us
on horseback, but leaves on foot.

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Just as I thought it was all behind us,
a new misfortune befell us.

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Our little granddaughter fell ill.

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Burning with fever,

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she cried out for help
and struggled like a wounded bird.

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What a night that was,
I cannot tell.

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Is it not a strange thing,

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how one becomes so attached
to such a little creature.

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With them, all is well,
even the very worst.

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And without them,
it is as if nothing exists.

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I completely forgot that I had left
my sick old woman alone in the room.

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The deathwatch beetle in the wall was
already ticking away her final minutes,

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during which her whole life
flashed before her eyes.

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Only the prayer for our granddaughter's
salvation kept her in this life.

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Who worked this miracle, I know not.

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But our granddaughter's fever
began to break,

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her breath flowed
like a gentle stream,

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and our little bird began to revive.

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And my old woman, letting her head
fall upon the pillow, sighed:

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"Now I can go."

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And then the light in her eyes faded,
her features grew sharp and hollow,

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and her breathing suddenly stopped.

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That's it,
the burden is laid upon the ground.

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You see,

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one might not love one's old woman,

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one might be angry with each other
day and night for twenty-five years.

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But in the hour when
the snub-nosed one comes for her,

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you feel something
clutching at your throat,

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as if a piece of yourself
is falling away.

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And though it be not beautiful,
though it constrained you greatly,

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still you pity it,
you love it, Lord.

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The sun has passed away.

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The cold sets in.

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That rogue frost
has crept even in here.

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Time is the best healer.

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How long can one mourn that
which can never be returned?

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Life is good, my friends.
The only trouble is—it is short.

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Ah, how I wish for a bit more.

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I—an old sparrow—would know
how to make use of it.

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And I wouldn't forget my friends...
Now then, let's shake ourselves off!

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But, as God is my witness, we have not
yet come to terms with our good Duke

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as to whose land this is.

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We are forbidden
to tread upon his meadow.

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If there were none in France like us,

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who love
their vineyards and fields,

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what would the King have for his fare?

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In the evening we gathered
at the "Three Mugs" tavern.

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It is always easier to reach
an agreement at the table.

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And here is what we devised.

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It is not enough to
teach our Duke a lesson,

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we must also have
some fun ourselves.

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We set off for the meadow, carrying
upon our shoulders a clever contraption,

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veiled for the time being by a cloth.

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Everyone shouted: "Hats off!
Long live our good Duke!"

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And those fools guarding the meadow,
of course, could understand nothing.

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With cries of "Where is the Lord Duke?"
they stopped our procession.

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Choking with laughter, we answered:

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"Our good Duke is with us."

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But then the Duke himself appeared,
in his own proper person.

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And I said once more:
"Our Duke is with us."

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He immediately noticed the canopy
and ordered the veil to be torn away.

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Does it look like him? I think so.

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The nose is a bit long, true.

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But no matter, let the Duke
be left with a long nose.

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Being a well-bred man,
the Duke de Nevers realized at once

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that there was no room here
for two Dukes.

232
00:20:36,447 --> 00:20:40,187
And we... we began
to celebrate our victory.

233
00:20:40,436 --> 00:20:46,170
We ate, drank, and made merry all day,
sparing neither our soles nor our throats.

234
00:21:26,142 --> 00:21:29,235
That is how we showed
that the folk of Clamecy

235
00:21:29,377 --> 00:21:33,213
know how to be obedient
subjects of their Duke,

236
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:37,207
and yet always do
exactly as they please.

237
00:22:02,712 --> 00:22:05,721
The poorer I am,
the more riches I possess.

238
00:22:06,408 --> 00:22:09,697
With me are my children,
my friends.

239
00:22:10,493 --> 00:22:13,895
My granddaughter, my
blue-eyed little titmouse.

240
00:22:14,414 --> 00:22:16,796
And my student, my apprentice.

241
00:22:17,116 --> 00:22:18,972
Is this not wealth?

242
00:22:20,054 --> 00:22:23,717
Children leave home,
and the old stay with the grandchildren.

243
00:22:24,037 --> 00:22:27,510
It is even better that way—
we always have something to talk about.

244
00:22:28,899 --> 00:22:33,121
Fine little creatures,
who are nothing yet,

245
00:22:33,468 --> 00:22:36,306
but will surely be something one day.

246
00:22:37,116 --> 00:22:39,609
It is for them that I live.

247
00:22:42,168 --> 00:22:47,008
These are my seeds, which I cast
into the times to come.

248
00:22:53,409 --> 00:22:55,577
This is my workshop.

249
00:22:56,516 --> 00:22:59,183
They had burned it down
when the plague was here.

250
00:23:00,580 --> 00:23:02,594
It has always been so:

251
00:23:02,874 --> 00:23:06,710
one man creates,
another destroys.

252
00:23:22,029 --> 00:23:27,547
And yet life is good when one
feels the steadiness of a sure hand.

253
00:23:28,515 --> 00:23:30,564
When your work is with you.

254
00:23:31,803 --> 00:23:35,749
And the best of what I have made—
the souls I have sculpted—

255
00:23:36,132 --> 00:23:37,976
they will be happier,

256
00:23:38,081 --> 00:23:44,572
because they will stand on my shoulders
and will see further.

257
00:24:10,660 --> 00:24:14,493
The End
(subs by Ayri, edited by Niffiwan)