The old inn "All'Orso nero," which dates from 1656, has changed its name several times: Café Christian, then Café Bertrand, Café del Commercio, now finally Restaurant "All'Orso." Two or three times a year, usually during the winter months, the "Borelli Shows" company and the "Georges Chamarat" company from the Odéon Theater in Paris would come to entertain the indigenous peoples of the French overseas colonies, as well as the native savages of the rediscovered provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, once "considered foreign." They offered us a varied program of French theater classics, and without them I would never have known, at 12 years old, what the theater of Molière, Marivaux, Corneille or Racine actually was. In the evenings, the company performed dramas by Victor Hugo for Bischwiller's good society; but the morning shows were devoted to elementary school and municipal middle school students. The high and spacious performance hall, impossible to heat from December to March, was usually the meeting place of local associations, canton fire department, athletics and gymnastics club, Harmonie chorale, Lower Rhine ram rabbit breeders' association (Hasenbockverein), who celebrated their annual grand banquets there amidst folk dances and folk libations. Dated to the 17th century as the comedies and tragedies performed by the "Georges Chamarat" company, the hall was located at the back of the Black Bear, or Café du Commerce...