When the Mountain Fell

Debaros, even the word as a singing sound, it rings softly in a little sadly, here, inside your head.

Then it fades and disappears, just as the valley itself has disappeared. Debaros, once its pastures were a beautiful green color, even as early as May, there were There are all kinds of tiny mountain flowers, some whiter than snow, bluer than the sky, bright orange and purple and yellow.

How beautiful it was in those days. Very beautiful. But all that was almost twenty years ago. Almost twenty years ago. Before the mountain. The CBS Radio Workshop dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind.

Tonight, a version for listening of a French novel called When the Mountain Fell, written by C.F. Ramuse, adapted for the workshop by Draper Lewis, with an original musical score composed and conducted by Lawrence Rosenthal.

The name is Plon, old Plon. Once I was called Pierre, when my back was straight and strong, and my flocks as many as the stars that pasture up there in the evening sky. Pierre, all that is past.

Now I am old Plon, who sits here by the well and cossips with the women of the village, or carved little animals of wood for the children. Do you see that path to the right of the church?

That is the path the men of our village would follow each spring, driving their cattle and goats up to the pastures or the summer. There were so many men from our village living up there in the valley that last terrible year when the mountain fell.

There was Nendus who walked with a limp, just now the Baker's son. There were the three brothers named Carut and Altran and Serafin. Antoine, my top is empty again. Is there more coffee? Antoine, who shared a little cabin with Serafin.