Heureux les humbles
Engraving by Françoise Taylor, mid-1940s
The picture is titled 'Heureux Les Humbles' (Blessed are the Humble), a collection of short stories by the French writer Jean de La Varende, published in 1942. Author of around twenty novels, ten biographies and more than two hundred short stories, de la Varende focused mainly on the evocation of the Normandy region with its country priests, peasants and squires, while expressing his nostalgia for the Ancien Régime and a passion for the sea and sailors.
The Ancien Régime was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France before the French Revolution.
