The Time of Secrets

"After the terrible affair of the Castle, so gloriously ended by Bouzigue’s victory, joy settled in the little Bastide-Neuve, and the long vacation began."

Young Marcel Pagnol continued his holidays at Bastide Neuve in the Garlaban hills, but ‘time goes by and it turns the wheel of life like water turns the wheel of mills’; the games he used to play with his little brother Paul no longer really amused him and his dear Lili now had to work in the fields with his father.

Marcel meets the daughter of a supposedly ‘great’ poet, Isabelle Cassignol, a very enigmatic creature who will be the source of our young teenager's first love affections, and who will even betray - temporarily - his friendship with Lili. It's a momentary lapse that gives way to new adventures with his steadfast friend, such as that of the famous Pétugue snake.

But then October arrived, and with it the start of the new school year. Marcel, a young scholarship holder, left his local school on the Chemin des Chartreux to start sixth form at the Lycée Thiers in Marseille. He is no longer the son of ‘Monsieur Joseph’, but one of many pupils who will have to get used to the new rules of secondary school, with its many teachers, its pawns, its day pupils, its boarders, its friendships and its rivalries...