Les dragons de Villars

The story of the opera was said to have been borrowed from La Petite Fadette by George Sand, updated by the librettists to the time of Louis XIV.

[1][2] It is also known by the English title The Hermit's Bell The piece was first offered to the director of the Opéra-Comique, Émile Perrin, who found it too dark, even after having the composer play some of it to him.

Some years later, the authors met Léon Carvalho, who had just taken over the direction of the Théâtre-Lyrique, and who accepted the completed piece without reading a word or hearing a note.

He learns that there is nothing to be had and also that all the women have fled, fearing the unprincipled soldiers of King Louis XIV who have been sent in pursuit of a group of Protestant fugitives – or Camisards – hiding in the mountains; and that the 'Dragons de Villars' are said to be an especially wild and dissolute set.

While Belamy is sleeping, Thibaut calls his servant Sylvain and scolds him because he has now repeatedly been absent over-long on his errands; finally he orders him to saddle the mules.

While Thibaut expresses his fear that they have been stolen by the fugitives, Rose Friquet, an orphan-girl and poor goat-keeper, brings the mules, riding on the back of one of them.

Sylvain carries food every day to the refugees, and Rose , despised and supposed to be wicked and malicious, protects him because he once intercepted a stone, which was meant for her head.

Belamy is delighted with the pretty Georgette, but she tells anxiously, that all the women in the village must remain true to their husbands, for the hermit of St Gratien (though dead for two hundred years), is keeping watch, and at any case of infidelity will ring a little bell, which is heard far and wide.

Nobody knows who was the culprit; Thibaut, having learned that the soldiers had been commanded to saddle their horses in the midst of the dancing the night before, and that Belamy, sure of his prey, has come back, he believes that Rose has betrayed the Camisards in order to win the price set on their heads.

The whole village is assembled to see the wedding, but Sylvain appears and when Rose radiantly greets him, he pushes her back fiercely, believing Thibaut's whispers that she betrayed the refugees, who are, as he has heard, caught.

Rose is too proud to defend herself, but when Georgette tries to console her, she silently produces a paper proving that the refugees have safely crossed the frontier; Sylvain is ashamed.

He at once orders Sylvain to be shot, but Rose bravely defends her lover, threatening to reveal the dragoon's neglect of duty at the hermitage.

When Belamy's superior appears to hear the news, his corporal is only able to stammer out that nothing in particular has happened, and so after all, Georgette is saved from discovery, and Rose becomes Sylvain's happy bride.