Visite du Château de Pesteils avec sa Propriétaire, Yvonne de Miramon.

I am very happy to welcome you to the Pestel Castle. This old fortress was used to defend the whole valley, because we had a lot of invaders at that time. The castle is located at an altitude of 700 meters. So it's a mountain castle anyway. The dungeon is 40 meters high. You will see it later. This castle was inhabited by four different families, but they are actually always the same family. There has never been a sale or purchase. These four families were allied. The castle simply left the family for 80 years, at the time of the revolution. The castle was taken as a national property and was bought back by my husband's great-grandfather a little later. So now we're going to talk about the architecture. As you can see, the castle is made up of several different blocks. On each side, you have wings, which were brought back in the 19th century. These were colossal works. Behind, you can see the huge dungeon, which is 40 meters high, and which is the oldest part of the castle. So now I invite you to follow. We're going to go inside the castle to see all the work that has been done in recent years. The tympanum that you see there represents the alliance of two families. The teapots, with the lozenges, and the Montamas, with the lions. We are inside the castle. This is the entrance hall. It was built in the 19th century. It was an old kitchen. To make it, two rooms had to be removed, which were above, and to enlarge the exterior, to make this staircase a double revolution, we had to dig in the rock to have room to see it, to place it. And in this place, you will see that we really dug into the rock, because here you can see the rock behind, as you can see here. This hall is completely in the Gothic style. Here you can see a very beautiful tapestry that represents Judith and Olefern. But above all, the tapestry is amusing because it was found by chance in the rubbish bins. It covered an old horse car as if it were a tapestry of nothing at all, while it was a beautiful tapestry of the 16th century. Now I'm going to take you to the guardroom. This guardroom is the oldest part of the main body of the castle. It was transformed a bit in the 19th century because, as we added wings, we had to make openings. And as you can see, these are orientalist openings, that is, full 19th century. And you can see the depth that was the end of the castle. At this place, there was a very beautiful fireplace that we couldn't leave because we had to make the two openings. And the fireplace went to another room private of the castle, which we will show you later. And the woodwork was done by an architect from Aurillac, with the weapons of the Miramontes, of course, because in the 19th century, we would have to put these weapons everywhere. Now we enter the Grand Salon. This salon was completely redone at the end of the 19th century because it is in a wing that has been completely rebuilt. The work here was finished very late, in the 1913s, more or less. The total decoration was finished at that time. And we can see it by these boxes that are completely new. We see the winding of the roots, which are very typical and represent the five senses. The touch, the sight, the taste, the smell and the hearing. Below, there is a very beautiful chimney dating from the 15th century and which comes from Chapoteau, which was called the Château de Bronzac, which is an hour's drive from here, which was a property that belonged to the Pestel, which was now a ruin. And this chimney was brought here at the end of the 19th century. There are some beautiful paintings in this salon. Here is a portrait of Dubuffel, who was the painter of Empress Eugénie. She was also the painter of the great singer Rachel. Next to it, you can see this painting, which is, according to Elisabeth Vigée, the Rembrandt. It's a rather sad story because the original painting was brought here by a cousin of my husband, who, desperate not to inherit Pestel, brought one of the most beautiful paintings of the salon. But this copy is still magnificent. Below, we have put some family portraits, simply to show that it is a castle inhabited and alive. We do the baptisms of our children in the chapel, we marry our children there very regularly. The last marriage is that of my youngest son, who got married here ten years ago. It feels like it was yesterday, but it was ten years ago. Turning to this little estrade, we have two paintings by Carl Vanloo. Here we have three wax figures that were given to us by the Oriac Museum, which closed. They are wax figures from the Paris museum. They were given to us because they represented Lafayette, and the scene really took place in Pestel. So I had the priority of inheriting this. Now we are going to go up to the first floor. Here, the higher we go, the longer we fall into the centuries. Follow me. Here you can see the very characteristic lions of the 19th century. This scene represents the inauguration of the launch of the works in Pestel. As we still do today, when we give an official reception, we have the prefect of the department, the bishop of Saint-Flour, the architect Emile Lemaigre, who undertook all the works here, the marquis of Miramont, and his wife, the marquise of Miramont. On the panel next to it, you can see the extent of the works, which were colossal. In the construction of these works, I read in a letter, in this little archive, that the grandparents had put a little bit of gold in the foot of one of the buildings. I can tell you that all the children of all generations, my children, my grandchildren, everyone gave absolutely frightening blows, but never found anything. Fortunately, the walls were very, very hard. Here we have the remains of the painted ceilings, of the two rooms that were destroyed to make this huge hall. Here we find ourselves in one of the two rooms that were redone in the 17th century, and which are, of course, scenes from mythology. This one represents the famous woman with her hair transformed into a snake. On all four sides, we see the young ladies of Miramont, who could not get married because there was not a powerful enough party for them, so they were made into nuns. The family had created a convent in Vigues-sur-Serre to house them. Behind, you have a painting depicting the young lady of Miramont, who is the sister of my husband's father, my stepfather, who had joined the religion at a very young age. It was painted for his last ball, and this toilet, something extraordinary, I found pieces of it, including the fans, very recently in a case, in a storage room. Let's move on to the other painting. Here, we also have a mythological scene. It's the poor Icarus who approached the sun and crashed into the Aegean Sea. This is exactly the time when these two rooms were redone, around 1608, because it was the time of an alliance between Miramont, where you can see the weapons up there, and the sandbags there, so it's exactly the time. Admire the very beautiful flower frieze. This piece has been completely redone because I had a film shoot about 15 years ago, and the director was a specialist in the decoration of that time, and he went to Pestel to gather and make a very beautiful harmony. It's true that the piece has been completely transformed. We're going to go back in time, and we're going to go to the dungeon. We're going to enter the dungeon, and the bridge we're going to use was built in the 19th century. Until that date, the dungeon was totally independent. It was not connected to the castle. Paul Mignac's fortress underwent several sieges, including one in 1425, which was very important, and set fire to a part of the main monument. Now we're in the dungeon, which was really used to gather the population and the guards in times of invasion. There must have been a hatch at one end of the floor, because below, there was a room, a cellar, in which the provisions were kept. There were water sources in Pestel, so there was all the water that was needed to feed and dehydrate. This room was the Lord's chamber. At that time, the Lord and all his children, all his servants, It was very, very inhabited. There are two frescoes from the 15th century. They posed a problem because we had them restored about six years ago, because they were fading. They posed a problem because they had already been redone in 1913, and they had been redone in the fashion of that time, i.e. with cartels, very precise little flowers, and of course, it was the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th. So we wondered whether they should be restored in the style of the 15th century or whether we should start again and restore the 19th century, especially since these frescoes were represented at the French Monument at the Trocadéro in Paris. At the very top, there is a small star, and it was discovered during the last works. These large frescoes represent the four priests because studies have shown that in the dungeons of the 14th and 15th century, the paintings represented the priests all the time. This is a fairly recent thesis. And on the other side, there is the master and his pupil. We are going to start the association of the dungeon, which is 40 meters high and has a hundred steps. We are on the first floor of the dungeon. It was a guard room, of course, but in the 19th century it became a chapel. We were also lucky to have these figures of Cyrus who lead this chapel. We have baptized most of our grandchildren here. I have a son who did his communion here. It is regularly used. We still have the old priests of the church with the parquis of Méramont, the marquis of Méramont. All this comes from the church of Paul Villac. We find ourselves in one of the guard rooms which had the particularity, in case of overload, of being able to put a ceiling which was placed on these pillars and which could be dismantled because, as in the room of the Lord, these were rooms where there were many people. Here we have made the archive room. Here is a painting which represents the genealogy of the family. We are over there, the corner of my children, of my husband, of me. I am Breton. There is not even my name here, but it is erased. Above, you see pictures of castles. This is the castle of Pestel, the only one left of the family. Next to it is the castle of Pauillac which was sold 15 years ago. It is 100 km from here, on the side of Brioude. The castle of Fargues seems to have left the family about 60 years ago. The castles on this side were the possessions of the family of Cassagne de Miramont in the Rouerc, because the family came from the Rouerc but emigrated to the Cantal in 1608, approximately, by his marriage to a Pestel, a young lady from Pestel. As I told you earlier, the four families succeeded each other, but it was by alliance and not by sale. Here we have some letters, some manuscripts. You can see the signatures of all the great kings. Next to it, you have the erection by the king Louis XV of the Marquis of Cassagne de Beaufort on the land of Pestel. The title of Marquis belongs to Pestel, to the castle of Pestel. We have some papers, passports, cards, signatures, terriers. My husband's grandfather, in 1933, left this writing, which was quite beautiful. I will show it to you. I will put it behind so that I can show it to you. I will show it to you because it is quite beautiful as an advice for us. We are going to go up one more floor to see the room of the Eternal Return. We made the room of the Eternal Return because during the war, in 1943, the shooting of this film took place, which remained a cult film. The actors were Jean Marais, Madeleine Sologne, Delannoy for the conversations, for the discussions, and Jean Cocteau for the staging. And here we have letters from each of these actors who thanked for the shooting for being welcomed in Pestel. Unfortunately, we do not have many explanations about this shooting in the middle of the war because we were not born and there is no one from that time who can tell us, so we are not at all aware. Now we are going to take you to another floor, which is the Chemin Ronde, with a very beautiful view of the panorama, the mountains of the Cantal, the Cantalienne countryside, the La Serre river, because this castle was built to protect this valley. Now we are going to the kitchen which was built in 1900 and was used until 1995. We are going to the service part and here is the charge stand which was built in the same way in 1900 or 1890, I do not remember exactly, and which is still used every day. You see the handle, it is not so light, but it allows us to exercise and it is used all the time. It intrigues a lot the visitors who tell us to electrify it. Now we are going to this great and beautiful kitchen. We rebuilt it exactly in the same way as it was since 1900 and we received the Cornu prize in 2002 which is the reward for the most beautiful kitchen of the year. Here you see a cantou, it is a Cantalienne specialty, with these two small wooden benches which were used to keep the salt. This is the grandmother's place. Two characters, as you can see, we dressed with supplies that we found here in the reserves. Here we can admire the buttons of the supplies which represent the weapons of Miramont and the great-grandmother Rouget. Here you still have the old kitchen which was used 15 years ago. We see the pipes which go up to the water tank which gave the water for the Réchaussée. A little further you can see the sockets which were called domestiques. You see, it designated all the rooms. And in this frame you can see the saucepan which was used for the dishes, the cutting of the poultry, the meat, in a word for all that was a little dirty. So here is the saucepan. The character sticks the coals. So now I'm going to take you to a private part which is our dining room and our living room where we eat every day. So we go through this little door which used to be the counter. Because when we received people in this dining room, even if there were two people, there was a person in the oven, a person in front of the counter, a person on the other side of the counter, who could finally serve. Here is our daily room which is still a little bit in disarray, but we are still very happy to present it to you because it is not open to the public. So here you can see that it is made in the neo-gothic style, absolutely pure. The furniture was made in Aurillac and ordered for Pestel. The fireplace was a very beautiful fireplace which came from the guard room but which was transported here because there was room for it and it was covered with plaster in the way of the 19th century because it was always necessary to have these weapons and all these attributes of its nobility everywhere. This was a characteristic of the 19th century. Finally, it was a pleasure to explain to you a little bit about Pestel. I hope you enjoyed it, that you had a good time and that it will make you want to come back and it will be a pleasure to welcome you.