Info Sought on the Monuments Men and the Great Depoopening of Dampierre

So I’m reading “The Monuments Men” by Robert Edsel, and came across something stunning.

U.S. Army Lt. James Rorimer, one of the Monuments Men working in the Ile de France region, discovered the following:

At Dampierre, the Germans had installed a cocktail bar in front of Golden Age, one of France’s most celebrated murals. But all in all, it had been a good trip. Damage was minimal; spirits were still high. Another story from Dampierre seemed to epitomize the situation. The Germans had used the library’s renowned Bossuet letters for toilet paper, but after they left, the caretaker found the letters in the woods, cleaned them off, and returned them to the library. Now that was dedication. That was service!

What would prompt this clearly dedicated individual to clean letters – and I assume not just a few – of German excrement? I wanted to know more.

It’s proving a little harder than I thought.

The “Bossuet” letters referred to must be those of Jacques-Benigne Lignel Bossuet, a 16th century theologian, widely considered “one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist,” according to Wikipedia.

But the Wikipedia entry makes no mention of this World War II incident – clearly a significant event in the history of these letters. So I keep looking.

Dampierre is a commune in the French department of Yvelines, located to the southwest of Paris. Bossuet himself was Bishop of Metz, nearly four hours by car from Dampierre, south of Luxembourg and north of Nancy.

He was a student at the College de Navarre in Paris – where you’d think it would be natural to find a respository of his letters. The Wikipedia page mentions Bossuet as a student, but nothing about the letters – through it does say this: “The college was suppressed at the time of the French Revolution, its library dispersed and its archives lost.”

And who knows where such letters and archives were further distributed during World War II, when French authorities were moving national treasures all over the place trying to keep them out of the hands of the Germans?

And to me it makes sense that this Bossuet is the Bossuet in the book. Still, I’d like a firm confirmation. And to know the name of the caretaker who undertook this depoopening.

I even came up empty-handed at the Monuments Men Foundation website. Bummer.

(Not that their search engine is all that great; I searched for “Bossuet” and came up with results for basset hound and boquet. So . . . )

I Googled the mural mentioned, and found on Pinterest someone has collected the art mentioned in the book – or at least I assume that’s their goal. WARNING Pinterest.

If anyone out there can point me to more information, I’d appreciate it.