82 | The Good Life

82 | The Good Life France https://www.cognac-no22.com/

Jean-Louis Remilleux never parts company with these two jealously guarded ceramic baboons placed on the mantelpiece of the small green drawing room-cumlibrary. The clock, acquired in the Portobello Road flea market in London, also has sentimental value. A portrait of the Duchess of Bourbon (Mademoiselle de Nantes, daughter of Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV) in mourning hangs on the wall. these sales have already been filled up again. The decor of each room is executed with exquisite taste, the fruit of feverish trips to antique shops, or the painstaking study of auction house catalogs. Remilleux never tires of telling the story of his finds; to follow him through the maze of his château is to be guaranteed protection against boredom. Every piece of furniture, every painting and every ornament provides the backdrop to an enthusiastic digression, peppered with hilarious anecdotes that cannot fail to amuse the listener. A natural storyteller, he considers himself both lucky and lazy, but is a man of true culture notwithstanding, combined with a strong will. “Ornaments, whether taken separately or together, besides the fact that they are poems, are a way for the connoisseur to express himself in secret, to whisper secrets to all and sundry,” as Paul Morand aptly puts it in L’Enfant de cent ans. Jean-Louis Remilleux’s residence is far more than a pretty interior. Everything had to be started from scratch in the case of Digoine; fortunately, the sale of Groussay, coming as it did as a sort of miraculous manna from heaven, rendered the task that much easier. “I’ve been here ten years now; who knows, perhaps one day I’ll grow tired of it. People are prisoners of family The Good Life France | 83