A great novel by Juliette Benzoni, truculent, full of twists and turns, where the endearing and very human characters take us to the heart of a breathless Middle Ages, noble and popular, in any case, still full of flesh and life, giving us, once again, a real pleasure to read and an emotion to feel.

 

Paris on Easter morning 1143. In the group of pilgrims who part for Saint Jacques de Compostela, a strange woman slipped in, her face hidden by a veil. They say she undertakes the long and perilous journey to save the life and soul of an innocent. It is also said that her beauty is such that she had to disfigure it for no longer have to suffer from men. She is eighteen years old, and a quarrelsome and debauched Baron falls madly in love with her eyes, he has abandoned for her, wife, castle and fortune, and intermingles the pilgrimage.
A great novel by Juliette Benzoni, ethnic, full of twists, where endearing human characters  brings us panting to the heart of Middle Age, noble and popular, in any case, always full of flesh and life, giving us once again, a real pleasurable lecture of emotion



A ma mère (to my Mother)
Dedicated to Juliette Benzoni's beloved Mother Marie-Suzanne Arnold.



« He came to me despite the distance between our homes, the long road and the agonies of the journey ».
~ Ibn Hazan ~(11th century)
 

♥ As we learned from Juliette Benzoni during one of our visits, this Novel should have been the first in a new series! So what happened? The answer is very simple: the Trévise publishing house closed its doors, and this book was the last work published by Trévise in 1983...!

♥ Therefore, Juliette had to add an epilogue to end the story in a decent and plausible way! I really regret this and I'm sure the ingenious Author would have transported us to wonderful horizons with these characters that we enjoyed in this story.

♥ While we were talking about Un aussi long chemin with Juliette, the Novelist told us that Marion Sarraut had wanted Gérard Chambre to play Baron Hughes de Fresnoy. We remember him as the fiery Jason Beaufort in 'Marianne, a Star for Napoleon', Jean de Poton Xaintrailles in 'Catherine' and Admiral John Paul Jones in 'Le Gerfaut'.

♥ The reason why it never came to that was that they couldn't find the funding, to shoot almost exclusively on location all along the route to Compostela! Such a shame, I'm sure that under Marion Sarraut's direction, we would have been treated to an extraordinary and unforgettable film!

♥ Unfortunately, this beautiful story, which takes us back to the early Middle Ages (1143), has only been translated so far in Germany and Slovakia.

♥ The title chosen by the German publisher seems strange, from Another long Journey to : Marjolaine, the way to temptation. But it's an excellent translation by Hans Nicklisch, who also translated all of the Catherine, Marianne and Angélique (Anne Golon) adventures into German.

♥ I really love this novel about the magnificent Marjolaine des Bruyères. The seemingly impossible love between the beautiful Marjolaine and that very dashing Chevalier, Baron Hughes de Fresnoy. Linda, webmaster

[ Illustration by Michel Landi]

Edition 1987 (Paperback) J'ai Lu
 

Synopsis : Another Long Journey 1987

In 1143, around sixty pilgrims set off from Paris on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Among them was a young woman, Marjolaine, who caught everyone's attention. All Baron Hugues de Fresnoy could see of her were her sea-coloured eyes, for the gentlewoman wore a veil that hid a face that she herself, it was said, had disfigured. But no matter! Hugues was captivated. For these eyes, for Marjolaine, he gives up everything: wife, castle, fortune, and joins the pilgrimage. A dazzling love will blossom between these beings who are so far apart.
Will they be able to preserve it despite the pitfalls, tragedies and trials? Despite the incredible mission entrusted to them before they died. Odonde Lusigny, a mysterious Templar?

[ Miniature from the Livre des Tournais by René d'Anjou ]

Editions Pocket 1987 & 2001



[ Painting by Rogier van der Weyden ]

Edition Christian de Bartillat 1995

Paris on Easter morning 1143. In the group of pilgrims setting off for Santiago de Compostela, a strange woman has slipped in, her face hidden by a veil. It is said that she is undertaking this long and perilous journey to save the life and soul of an innocent man. It is also said that she is so beautiful that she has had to disfigure herself so that she no longer has to suffer at the hands of men. She is eighteen years old, and her eyes are about to fall madly in love with a debauched baron, who will abandon his wife, castle and fortune for her, and join the great pilgrimage.

This is a great novel by Juliette Benzoni, truculent and full of twists and turns, where the endearing and very human characters take us to the heart of a breathless Middle Age, noble and popular, always full of flesh and life, giving us, once again, a real pleasure to read and a real treat to behold.

♥ Be sure to read the magnificent preface by publisher Christian de Bartillat in this volume, which you can find below.

Édition France Loisirs 1996

 

Synopsis : Another Long Journey 1996

On Easter morning in Paris in 1143, a young veiled woman joins a group of pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Marjolaine, eighteen-year-old seeking to escape her stunning beauty and save the soul and life of an innocent man. Baron Hughes de Fresnoy, a rough and rowdy debauchee, will he be unable to resist Marjolaine's hold on him through a series of tumultuous adventures, and will give up everything for her?

♥ France Loisirs, also selected Rogier van der Weyden (Dutch painter) « Portrait of a Woman » (ca. 1466 and now in the National Gallery in London) for their edition, as did the publisher Christian de Bartillat for Bartillat. However, France Loisirs designed the cover slightly differently and used another typescript.
 

[ Portrait of Anne Boleyn, © The Bridgeman Library ]

Editions Pocket 2014
 

Synopsis : Another Long Journey 2014

Her face is veiled. All you can see are her eyes, the most beautiful eyes you have ever seen. Nobody knows anything about her, and ever since that Easter day in 1143, when she joined the penitents on their way to Santiago de Compostela, tongues have been wagging. There are whispers that she undertook this long and perilous journey to save the life and soul of an innocent man. There are also whispers that she has disfigured herself so that she no longer has to suffer at the hands of men...
Baron Hugues de Fresnoy is a quarrelsome, a debauchee and a braggart. To win the mysterious stranger, he will do anything, even follow the pilgrims to Galicia...

♣ For the 2014 edition, Pocket wrote a new summary of the story. This is so far the most recent reprint in France.
 

♣ The single Novel has been translated in the foreign countries :




Verlag Herbig Germany 1987 Hardcover
 

Synopsis : Marjolaine - Weg der Versuchung 1987

Text translated from German by Linda Compagnoni Walther, webmaster

Marjolaine, the girl with the sea green eyes, experiences the curse of her beauty in the marriage forced on her by her impoverished aristocratic family to an older, rich Parisian bourgeois who is completely addicted to her youth. Disgusted by her husband's tender pursuits and ultimately innocent of his murder, she devises a bold way out. Unrecognized, her face covered by a veil, Marjolaine joins a group of pilgrims on Easter morning in 1143 in order to escape the mortal dangers threatening her and to be free from worldly temptations in future. But on the long pilgrimage, full of dramatic incidents, which she undertakes under the guidance of the mysterious Templar knight de Lusigny to the tomb of St James in order to find peace within herself, she meets Hughes de Fresnoy, the man which everything separates her from him, and yet he becomes her destiny despite all the obstacles.

The early medieval panorama of France in all its colourfulness, with its longing for God and fear of Satan, its hope of redemption and its belief in witches, opens up before the reader and forms the framework for the fate of two people who are prepared to pay the highest price for their love.
 

Ullstein Buch 1990 Paperback
 

Synopsis : Marjolaine - Weg der Versuchung 1990

Text translated from German by Linda Compagnoni Walther, webmaster

Life in early medieval France provides the colourful background for the story of a seemingly hopeless love between the beautiful, passionate Marjolaine and the strong-willed knight Hughes de Fresnoy. A gripping romance novel by the successful French author Juliette Benzoni.


 

The Slovakia 1995 edition

♣ A great novel by Juliette Benzoni, truculent, packed with twists and turns, set in the heart of the magnificently reconstructed Middle Ages.

~ Editions Pocket in 1987 ~

  Readers' Online Reviews 2014 :

♣ A novel that plunges us into the Middle Ages with accuracy. It gives us a better understanding of the place of women in the society of the time and the dangers they faced. A story of love as much as Faith in God but which never falls into outdated sentimentality. A nice surprise for me, who is not a fan of novels about the Middle Ages. As always, the historical reality is there, and you can feel all the research Juliette Benzoni has done on the period, the status of women, pilgrimages, and the Catholic faith that permeated every moment of everyone's life, whether they liked it or not. All in all, a wonderful escape.

♣ For me one of Juliette Benzoni's best. Both short and exciting it's one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read.

♣ For me, this is undoubtedly the best novel by J. BENZONI, an author I've loved since the "Catherine" series. It's all there: the Middle Ages, the beautiful heroine, travel, adventure and love, so romantic! I love it!
 

[ creation © Frédérique Aznag Zabée ]

 

Synopsis : Foreword by Christian de Bartillat, Editor 1995

Juliette Benzoni is not only a lifelong friend and publishing partner. For me, she is also an unusual character, a singular, dynamic and cordial personality, to which we are all the more attached as she is likely to confuse you. She also knows how to avoid it when you look for her, and she picks you up again with a lasso when you could walk away.
With her silver white hair, her radiant eyes, her open face, her generous silhouette, she reminds us of the ladies that the painters of the 17th century made of Diane, Goddess of the Hunt, seen in the galleries of the castles in the Loire Valley.

This would lead me to believe that Juliette is a character hunter, a true quill rider. She climbs her books, and her quill is an arrow. The galloping begins with the first word, and ends at the finish post where the word "hunger" is written. Then Juliette gets off the horse, and if we're there when it's time, she knows how to cook you in front of the stove - which is no longer that of dreams and witchcraft - of medieval kitchens reviewed and corrected by Brillat-Savarin.

But the word end also means beginning: it has been fifty times in thirty years that she has ridden on her imaginary horse, to lead to castles, cottages, moors and forests, these hordes of passionate lovers, wild witches, knights swordsmen and fornicators, so that the heroine, between monks and demons, crafty men and murderers, always ends up having the upper hand.

In the romantic racing stables, fifty horses are waiting for new adventures and new images. Because Juliette is not only the magician of words, she is also and above all the alchemist of images, which earns her special attention from film epic makers.

While so many others climb up and down according to fashions and polls, she remains in the bosom of success and possesses, without having sought for, a manna of followers who never ceases to implore her by saying:« one more, and quickly, please ».

Passion is her lot, and history is her permanent reference point. The truth of time is constantly alongside the truth of the heart... And her novels easily match the words of her metaphysics teacher, who in the boarding school for young girls in bloom where Juliette stayed, finished his classes by reading Agatha Christie's novels to his stunned students!

The Good Father may not have known that one of his students would one day be able to mix good feelings with the breathless terror of his detective novels.
So her imaginary novels are for all women, and her historical novels are of all times. Born in the world of petites filles modèles (note: French book by the Countess of Ségur 1858), Juliette knows how to lead us into the world of passionate women. Raised in the world of young girls in love, she lived in the world of authoritarian and ruthless men. So she draws from her own life, a new novel, always repeated.

With Un aussi long chemin, I followed Juliette through and through. It is one of her most beautiful novels, which we begin, and which we continue by asking the author never to finish. The beautiful Marjolaine, who causes all those who meet her to die of love for her, arouses the passion of one of the high barons of the Middle Ages, always ready to run after women only to abandon them again, and this passion, its ebb and flow, follows the path of Compostela, where behind the protagonists, this medieval epic is drawn, both noble and popular, divine and disbelieving. A real novel of that epoch, which never stops being present, a real animated painting that moves before our dazzled eyes. 
 

My little Gems...

[ Creation © Evelyne Diggelmann-Walther ]

The story of Marjolaine des Bruyères and Hughes de Fresnoy

Extract of  Another long Journey
translated by linda, webmaster

« Hughes's heart leaped. Marjolaine had not flinched and the luminous look she cast upon the man was without surprise. It was as if she was waiting for this moment. Perhaps unwittingly, Hughes had entered the heart of her dream, a dream that the young woman, through this love song could no longer separate from reality. A moment later she was in his arms.

Hughes suddenly had the impression of standing in a flower garden in spring. This woman-child was only freshness and softness. Her delicate lips seemed to melt under the heat of that kiss, the passion he could no longer restrain »...




[ creation © Frédérique Aznag Zabée ]

Extract of the Chapter : The final step

- I Hughes, Christian baron, lord of Fresnoy and other lands in the land of Vermandois, come to you, my lord Saint James, apostle of the Gauls and beloved of God, to implore you, to beg you to obtain from Almighty God forgiveness and mercy for the crimes, faults and sins I have committed throughout my life of pride and folly. I have sinned against you because I only took the road of the stars that leads to you for the love of a woman, and to this woman, whom a king would not be worthy of, I have caused nothing but pain and suffering. To you whom I have deceived, to her whom I would have defiled, to those who followed me and whom I have scandalised, I ask forgiveness, thanks and pity for the torments I am enduring and which will not be appeased by those I am asking for.

Suddenly, he bent over. One of the monks tore off his shirt. The other rolled up one of his sleeves and, raising a leather whip, brought it down with all his might on the offered back. Terrified, horrified, Marjolaine wanted to scream and run, but Bran Maelduin held her back with one strong hand while he pressed the other to her mouth.

« Be quiet ! »  he growled in Latin. You have no right to do that. He has chosen to undergo this public penance in front of you. It's his way of expressing his love for you. So that you never forget him, it's also his way of saying his farewells to you...