Once again, Robert . . . all you have to do to prove that Charlin made guns on the Darne patent is--produce such a gun. Then we can all agree, "Yes indeed, that is a Charlin-made Darne." Until that happens, there is nothing but speculation concerning the possibility of Charlin having produced any sliding breech guns other than under their own name and of their own design.
And M. Gournet has it nailed on F. Darne, or Darne Fils. No, those are not Darnes to "Darne collectors"--at least not knowledgeable Darne collectors. Is a Parker Reproduction a Parker? It is, after all, a perfect copy. But not made by Parker; rather, for Winchester in Japan. Same story with the Model 21's and Foxes currently turned out by CSMC. Collectors clearly recognize that those are not Winchester 21's, nor original Foxes. In none of those cases am I making any comment about the QUALITY of the "clones" in question, because that quality is often quite high. But it's a question of the gun being produced either by the original maker, or by a company that bought out the original maker and continued production of the same gun--which description clearly does not apply to the Darne clones, but does apply to Remington Parkers, Savage Foxes, and Marlin Elsies. (The latter except for the current Marlin Elsies, which are a totally different gun.) Bruchet bought the rights to continue to make Darnes, but they're often referred to either as just Bruchet, or Bruchet Darne--just as we refer to Remington Parkers, Savage (or Utica) Foxes, etc. It's a continuation of the same company rather than another company building guns on the same patent, once the patent protection has expired--which is what you have with the Darne clones, or with the non-VC Helice guns.
Some people call anything with a sliding breech (even a Charlin!) a Darne, just like we call facial tissue Kleenex, even if it's not made by Kleenex.
It's great if, through your efforts or John's, Beagle manages to resurrect his Abeille. That's certainly a positive outcome. But for all the bluff and bluster with which you entered the lists in this thread, you still haven't been able to tell Beagle anything about his gun--like who made it--that was not previously known. You made an effort to make a connection to Charlin, but that effort failed. So . . . we're still back to Square One on who made Beagle's gun. It's a Darne clone of some sort, maybe made by a company called Abeille; maybe by some St. Etienne gunmakers who chose that as a model name; maybe by Darne Fils. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with owning a French gun of "uncertain parentage". I've owned a bunch of them myself--non-VC Helices; some bearing no name at all; some bearing a name that almost certainly was not that of the maker. Some bearing somewhat misleading names, like a Petrik I owned marked "Gastinne Renette". That, for better or for worse, is the way it often works with French guns. And for that matter, it isn't all that different from British guns. In that case, they nearly all have names, but very frequently it's not the name of the real gunmaker. C'est la vie.
