COVER N. 231 - FRANCE

Postmark: La Poste 39002A France 

Posted on the 26th March; Received on the 6th April 2023
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It's always great to return home to a letterbox full of interesting letters, after some days out travelling. Still, before I went away I hadn't managed to transform all the letters and postcards I had received into blog entries, and now the "still to be added" stash is getting bigger, so now that I'm back, I'll have to speed up to make do for the hiatus...

So without further ado....

I was rather thrilled to receive a large C5 envelope with a full minisheet dedicated to "Cape and Sword" adventure heroes that one way or the other have made their way into our collective imagination. The more so since the quality of the illustrations on the stamps themselves is quite fine.   

Thank you so much Jean for this truly appreciated addition to the collection, and also for the very interesting stamps inside. Response will be on its way soon.

D'Artagnan and his three friends were amongst my childhood heroes, even though I don't think I have ever read Alexandre Duma's original work, since what I remember reading when I was a wee lad was either adapted abridged versions or bande dessinées albums of this great classic. 

As to Sir Lancelot du Lac, I clearly remember crossing the path of his unfortunate triangle with Arthur and Guinevere in comic books, such as Hal Foster's Prince Valiant. (The connection would be much later rekindled with Stephen Lawson's and Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian sagas, but that was long past my days of wooden sword fencing with school-bench colleagues).

Cyrano de Bergerac ... I have to confess I haven't seen the movie with Depardieu, but I know that Cyrano was a guy with an outstanding nose, fast to draw his sword, who had conceived some sort of  space travelling device, so I'm sure that we were acquainted somehow, a long time ago.

3 out of six, such is the tally, then, for the remaining 3 characters on the minisheet are unbeknown to me, that is, Capitaine Fracasse, Le Bossu and Pardillan (even though  Fracasse does seem to ring a bell (even if very dim...)

Each stamp pictures the hero in colour against a monocolour background depicting what I presume are their particular foes, and  a small illustration in a contrasting colour, highlighting a pivotal incident in their personal story, such as the "One for all and all for one" oath for D'Artagnan or Lancelot participating in a tournament as champion of  Guinevere.

 This beautiful  minisheet was issued on 25OCT1997, and the six stamps were all  denominated at 3 Francs plus a charity 60 centimes surtax.

Contrary to what I think is the usual practice, the postmark does not contain  the name of the place where the letter was processed.

Even stranger is the fact that the back of the envelope  exhibits a postmark from Funchal, Madeira, what implies that the letter travelled though a rather atlantic route before it got to my letterbox.