L'Âme de la France

At first erected in the little village centre before the town hall, it was quickly dynamited off its pedestal by the priest, then successively kept in pieces behind a hair salon, repaired by welding, and at last moved several kilometres to the place where it still stands.

It was then put back in place, rehabilitated as a memorial to World War I dead, celebrated in magnificent public ceremonies, registered in the general inventory of historic monuments, and finally classified as such in 2004.

[2] It depicts a helmeted female warrior stretching her two arms toward the sky, her right hand ending in a delicate little spray of flowers and, by contrast, her left fist forcefully gripping a shield slipped onto her forearm.

Thus, the figure visually depicts the country's gratitude toward the poilus through what the Mérimée Database of historic monuments called a "secular allegory",[3] and the statue can thus be used as a war memorial, as is the case on Réunion.

[2] In addition and even more importantly, she represents a young half-nude woman, her belly and her breasts bared "to the open air",[2] the slender body and the head turned to the right in a position that is ultimately very sensual.

In 1921, he made a first model in plaster, now stored in the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, Somme, which won the silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Français.

[6] Describing the monument to the dead as "shocking", the priest began to mobilise the faithful in favour of its destruction, and launched "a politico-religious battle"[2] nevertheless attributed by some to a maneuver taken up by Lucien Gasparin, a profoundly anti-clerical descendant of affranchi freed slaves.

[7] The young woman's back precisely faces the cliff that separates the cirque from the plateau that opens onto the Bélouve Forest, which dramatizes its placement, served by a high pedestal and a cast-iron décor.

[8] The parishioners appropriated the sculpture for themselves by assimilating the female personage it depicts with Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France,[7] and on 14 July 1974, according to Le Quotidien de La Réunion, "Hell-Bourg finally rendered it a homage worthy of this name, with flowers, trumpets, joy and serenity".

[2] This national recognition has helped promote the image of Hell-Bourg as a picturesque village of great interest to the cultural heritage,[citation needed] a view supported by the nearby presence of buildings such as the Maison Folio, likewise classified.