Vendémiaire

A sergeant who has survived the front, Pierre Bertin, is invalided out and sent to the rear to help with the harvest in the Languedoc vineyards. In the boat in which he descends the Rhone he meets an old man, Larcher, who has been evacuated from his farm near Maubeuge, and two of his daughters, The third, married daughter has stayed in the north in the region occupied by the Germans, and Larcher’s son-in-law is at the front. On reaching the Midi, Pierre Bertin is hired by the manager of a large estate belonging to Captain de Castelviel, a soldier who has been blinded and now lives with his mother. Two escaped German prisoners, having stolen the identity papers of two Belgian soldiers whom they have killed, present themselves and are also hired for the wine harvest. One of them pretends to be a mute, as he cannot speak French. One day, they steal the vineyard workers’ payroll and turn the accusation of theft off onto Sara, a young gypsy woman who lives in a caravan with her little girl. But one of the two boches is asphyxiated in the vat in which the grapes are fermenting. This coup de theatre allows the gypsy woman to be cleared of the crime. The other German tries to make himself invisible. One day, Larcher is told what has happened to his daughter. She has been accused, in her village, of having a child by an enemy soldier. In fact, the father is her husband, who had paid her a visit in secret. She had obtained papers for him which enabled him to leave the occupied zone. This very husband now turns up at the Castelviel farmhouse. —Velvet Light Trap