After waking up to a delicious breakfast of eggs, bread and cheese in Pierre’s farmhouse, our generous host agreed to drive us into Bazas on his way to work. Eric and I piled into his little white van and bounced along narrow country roads until reaching the highway.

We wanted to start there as my professor attended Catholic school at the University of Bazas when she was a teenager, until 1944. She always spoke of what a formative experience that location was, both in solidifying her religious upbringing– and making her a complete atheist.

The Bazas Cathedral

At last we arrived in Bazas, a small town with winding cobblestone streets where our car seemed always in immediate peril of crashing into something picturesque. Pierre pointed at the cathedral and explained he was sure the school had stood nearby but didn’t think it existed anymore. He parked and we prepared to say our farewells. Pierre frowned. “Work can wait.” he declared. “Let’s visit someone I know at the library in town and see what they can tell us.” I grinned. Babette’s story had claimed another victim.

In the Bibliotheque Mediatheque, a librarian listened to us with interest and pulled down a book with an old picture of boys school, which was named St. Jean. We learned that the university back then also included a girl’s school called Gisquet, though the building  had eventually become an art gallery. St. Jean now operated as a retirement home.

St. Jean boy’s school in 1940

The librarian took us upstairs to his office and we spent some time picking through group photos of students at the school, but my professor’s round face stared out from none of them. He ran several of her names into a database: Albert Ellsworth, Robert Brown, Ellsworth Brown…none of them registered. With a shrug, we gave up and returned to the street, still in discussion about Babette and her incredible life. Then the librarian spied an old man walking nearby. He hailed him, and the two spoke rapidly in thick southern accented French. Indeed, this gentleman had attended Bazas University, but graduated in 1949, too late to have known Babette. Another dead end.

Upstairs at the Bibliotheque…

Pierre walked with us near the cathedral, where part of an old medieval wall still ringed sections of the town. “I’ve really got to go now,” he admitted, as we gazed across the countryside. “But I think we learned a lot. That school, St. Jean, it wasn’t just any Catholic school. It was a Batharram institution. That’s a really severe Cistercian sect that started in the Pyrenees. I actually went to one of their schools, and it was no joke. If your professor had an issue with the Catholics, that may be your answer right there.”

We hugged our new friend goodbye and moved onward to investigate the cathedral.