Story of Robaire

He'd been a gym teacher in Brussels, and though he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes like crazy he claimed he could still do a set of rings.

When he retired, he and his wife Monique bought an old stone house in the hilltop village of Montaigut le blanc, in the Auvergne.

"Ah," he'd say, "I love the Auvergne, the air is so clear," puffing up his chest as if he were inhaling the fresh rural air. The deep inhalation immediately made him cough, a consequence of his smoking, which made Monique, his very pretty wife, laugh rather nervously.

He was known in the village as 'Mr. Bricolage' because of his devotion to restoring the old home he'd bought to its former glory.

When he wasn't working on his house, he painted small pictures in oil. If you look quickly at the sun or the moon when each are full, and just as quickly close your eyes, the image that appears when your eyes are closed comes close to the pictures Robaire painted.

"The imagination is everything," he liked to say, "it's all there is."