Study sheet: Contes de la rue Broca

📋 Course Outline

1. The Broca Street World
2. The Birth of the Collection
3. The Witch of Mouffetard Street
4. The Giant with Red Socks
5. Lustucru Rewrites History
6. Lustucru’s Forgotten Exploits
7. The Married Pair of Shoes
8. The Faucet Fairy’s Gifts
9. The Enchanter Corrects the Fairy
10. Scoubidou Predicts the Future
11. Scoubidou’s Prophecies and Voyage
12. The Little Devil Seeks Goodness

📖 1. The Broca Street World

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Rue Broca : a curved, narrow, winding street that forms an almost independent village beneath Paris because of a three-dimensional spatial anomaly.

★ Must-know

• The inhabitants of Rue Broca know one another, come from diverse origins, and share a love of stories.

📌 Pierre prefers impossible stories that cannot have happened because he believes they can contain deeper truth than merely plausible, realistic stories.

Further detail

• At number 69 Rue Broca, Papa Saïd runs a grocery-bar and is a Kabyle married to a Breton woman; at the time described, they have four children named Nadia, Malika, Rachida, and Bachir.

💡 Memory Hook

A hidden three-dimensional street dips beneath the Boulevard de Port-Royal.

📖 2. The Birth of the Collection

★ Must-know

• Monsieur Pierre first tells the children traditional tales, then proposes that they meet every Thursday afternoon to invent new stories together, and finally turns the results into a book.

• The collection draws on the children’s concrete ideas, poetic discoveries, and sometimes daring dramatic situations.

Further detail

• Nicolas Riccardi invented the opening idea of The Pair of Shoes, whose married shoes are named Nicolas and Tina, like him and his sister.

• In 1965, Bachir suggested that two fish in a jar at Papa Saïd’s bar could be magical, inspiring The Witch of the Broom Closet.

💡 Memory Hook

Children’s ideas and Pierre’s storytelling → collaboratively invented tales.

📖 3. The Witch of Mouffetard Street

★ Must-know

📌 The witch can become young and beautiful by eating a little girl in tomato sauce whose first name begins with N.

• The witch tries to capture Nadia through a tomato-sauce errand, disguises as different vendors, and finally becomes all 267 Rue Mouffetard vendors at once.

• Bachir finds Nadia by singing “Nadia, où es-tu ?”, locates her voice in the vegetable stall, and strikes the shared witch with his guitar.

• The witch dies when the heavy cash drawer falls on her head, freeing Nadia from inside it.

Further detail

• The 267 vendor forms are all manifestations of the same witch, so when one is knocked unconscious, the others fall unconscious simultaneously.

💡 Memory Hook

Tomato sauce → disguises → 267 market women → Bachir’s guitar.

📖 4. The Giant with Red Socks

★ Must-know

• The giant with red socks lives underground, is as tall as three floors, and emerges beneath Mireille’s house when her third tap cracks an egg.

📌 The giant’s red socks possess the power to rebuild Mireille’s destroyed house when he invokes them.

• The giant visits a Chinese sorcerer, a Breton sorcerer, and the pope of Rome in succession to become small enough to marry Mireille.

📌 The Sainte Vierge tells the giant to remove his socks, soak both feet in the sea while invoking her name, and then use no more than three wishes.

Further detail

• The giant’s three wishes make his socks fit, transport him to Mireille, and bring about the wedding day immediately.

💡 Memory Hook

Giant seeks marriage → travels for potions → receives three wishes.

📖 5. Lustucru Rewrites History

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Lustucru : an immortal barbarian prince whose supernatural destiny requires him to bear the ridiculous name Lustucru.

★ Must-know

📌 A fairy promises that Lustucru will be immortal and a great warrior only if his father gives him the name Lustucru.

• Lustucru recruits Jules César, raises and trains an army, crosses the Alps, exploits divisions among the Gauls, and defeats Vercingétorix at Alésia.

• Jules César falsifies Lustucru’s manuscript by replacing every grammatical form of Lustucru’s name with forms of Caesar, then claims the conquest of Gaul and becomes emperor.

• In 732, Lustucru secretly attacks the Arab camp at Poitiers, but Charles Martel claims the victory and removes Lustucru’s name from history.

Further detail

• In 486, Clovis captures Soissons, and Lustucru breaks the vase he received when Clovis tries to take it from him.

• The story attributes these famous exploits to Lustucru:

  • The battle of Poitiers
  • The horn at Roncevaux
  • The conquest of England
  • Joan of Arc’s victories
  • The composition of La Marseillaise

💡 Memory Hook

Lustucru performs the exploits, whereas others take the credit.

📖 6. Lustucru’s Forgotten Exploits

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Lustucru’s name : Lustucru’s name prevents historians from citing him and makes Madame Michel reject his marriage proposal because she fears becoming Madame Lustucru.

★ Must-know

• In 732, Charles Martel defeated the Arab army at the Battle of Poitiers only because Lustucru secretly attacked its camp during the night.

• Lustucru wins Madame Michel’s agreement to marry by hiding her cat and promising to return it if she accepts.

Further detail

• Lustucru is credited with these exploits: sounding the horn at Roncevaux in 778, conquering England for the Normans, expelling the English from France, recognizing Louis XVI at Varennes, composing the Marseillaise, crossing the bridge of Arcole under Austrian fire

💡 Memory Hook

Lustucru performs heroic deeds, but his name remains ridiculous and forgotten.

📖 7. The Married Pair of Shoes

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Nicolas and Tina : a married pair of shoes whose right-and-left positions prevent them from seeing each other while walking

★ Must-know

• Nicolas and Tina try to greet each other by moving sideways, causing the woman wearing them to trip repeatedly and fear that her feet will be amputated.

• The woman understands that the shoes are in love, stops wearing them, and orders that they be polished and never separated.

Further detail

• After the left shoe begins making the same movement, the doctor threatens to cut off both feet and prescribes twenty thousand francs of medicines plus three thousand francs for the consultation.

• A lame girl eventually receives Nicolas and Tina, and because she walks little and slowly, the shoes remain mostly side by side until Tina’s sole wears through.

💡 Memory Hook

Love makes the shoes move toward each other, causing repeated falls.

📖 8. The Faucet Fairy’s Gifts

★ Must-know

• After Gaul became Christian, a priest prohibited offerings to the fairy of the spring, erected a stone cross, and performed a Latin procession to drive her away.

📌 The fairy grants Martine the power to produce a pearl with every word she says, with ordinary words producing small pearls and swear words producing large pearls.

📌 The fairy grants Marie the power to produce a snake with every word she says, with swear words producing large snakes and malicious words producing venomous snakes.

Further detail

• Engineers remove the cross, capture the spring water, and carry it through pipes to the city, bringing the fairy to a kitchen faucet.

• Martine’s parents force her to stop attending school and speak all day over a bowl to produce pearls, then a young man imprisons and beats her to fill a large soup tureen.

• Marie marries a doctor working at the Institut Pasteur, who values her snakes for producing antivenom sera.

💡 Memory Hook

The wicked girl receives pearls, while the good girl receives snakes.

📖 9. The Enchanter Corrects the Fairy

★ Must-know

• The fairy draws three enchanters in black, brown, and blue, but only the blue enchanter accepts her proposal and comes to life after she blows on him three times.

📌 The blue enchanter removes the magical gifts from Martine and Marie, causing Martine to stop producing pearls and Marie to stop producing snakes.

Further detail

• After losing her pearls, Martine returns to her parents and becomes gentle and good, while Marie remains happily married to the doctor and can speak normally again.

💡 Memory Hook

Black enchanter, brown enchanter, then blue enchanter.

📖 10. Scoubidou Predicts the Future

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Scoubidou : a magical rubber doll who walks, speaks, sees the past and future, and discovers hidden things when her eyes are covered

★ Must-know

• Scoubidou tries to make Saïd buy Bachir a bicycle by singing a magical song all night, causing Saïd to ask every shopkeeper for a bicycle before correcting himself.

• Scoubidou predicts that a ship will be unable to leave because of a storm, and the prediction comes true despite the weather forecast announcing fair weather.

Further detail

• Saïd orders Bachir to get rid of Scoubidou, so Scoubidou leaves after receiving wooden-lens glasses made by Saïd.

• After boarding the ship, Scoubidou claims she can reveal the captain’s past, future, and hidden matters, and begins by naming wives and children in Le Havre, Singapore, and Dakar.

💡 Memory Hook

Blindfold, prediction, magical song, exile, and voyage.

📖 11. Scoubidou’s Prophecies and Voyage

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Scoubidou : a rubber doll who can see the past, the future, and hidden things when she wears her glasses.

★ Must-know

• 🔄 Scoubidou escapes and returns to Paris through these steps:

  1. A shark swallows her
  2. She finds her glasses in its stomach
  3. She removes a pearl from an oyster
  4. She rocks from one foot to the other and makes the shark ill
  5. She forces the shark to take her to Paris

• Scoubidou gives the pearl to Papa Saïd, who sells it and buys a bicycle for Bachir.

Further detail

• The captain hires Scoubidou for five new francs per day so that she can buy a bicycle for Bachir.

• The shark carries Scoubidou from Le Havre up the Seine through Rouen to Paris.

💡 Memory Hook

Lost glasses → failed prediction → betrayal and rescue

📖 12. The Little Devil Seeks Goodness

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Hell : a place at the centre of the Earth where the moral values are reversed: what is good among humans is bad there, and what is bad among humans is considered good.

★ Must-know

📌 The little devil wants to be kind even though his parents want him to become wicked, so his family removes him from school and sends him to work in the Central Boiler House.

• At the boiler, the little devil lowers the fire, comforts the damned, and encourages them to think of God; some are forgiven and disappear, so the Grand Controller transfers him to coal extraction.

• The little devil reaches Heaven after consulting a priest, the Pope, Saint Peter, Little Jesus, God, and the Virgin Mary, then succeeds in reading, writing, and calculating.

• The little devil solves the Virgin Mary’s challenge with 189 because its digits form a body with blue eyes drawn in the upper loop of the 8 and unequal legs formed by the 1 and 9.

Further detail

• After reaching the human world, the little devil frightens people because of his horns and bat wings, although he sincerely wants to become kind.

• A number is divisible by three when the sum of its digits is divisible by three, which allows the little devil to choose 189.

• The Virgin Mary transforms the little devil by washing away his remaining sins, replacing his bat wings with swan wings, and covering his horns with a white halo.

💡 Memory Hook

Hell rewards wickedness, while the little devil chooses kindness

📊 Synthesis Tables

Hidden Actor and Public Credit

Lustucru’s action	Person credited	Historical result
Conquest of Gaul	Jules César	César becomes emperor
Victory at Poitiers	Charles Martel	Lustucru’s name is erased
Other famous exploits	Various historical figures	Lustucru remains forgotten