French Lessons by Peter Mayle Read Free Book Online Page A

of the
national psyche, a compulsion to educate and thus to civilize those who have
suffered the misfortune of being born in a less privileged part of the world.
It happens all the time in Provence, where I have received free tuition in
subjects as varied as the skinning of red peppers, the extinction of rats, the
treatment of ailing plane trees, the training of truffle hounds, and the
correct way to administer a suppository
(doucement, doucement).
Now it
was about to happen again.
    After a moment or two of muttering to his
friend and another grunt of laughter, my neighbor turned back to me. The first
thing to know, he said, is never to leave frogs in your hotel bedroom.
Jamais.
    I nodded. It was undoubtedly a very bad habit to get
into. And then he told me why.
    Some friends of his had been away from
home on a job near Lyon, draining a large reservoir before starting work on the
restoration of an old château. It was spring, and the reservoir was
teeming with frogs—succulent young creatures, an opportunity too tasty to
pass up. One of the men, wise in the ways of the frog, knew exactly what to do.
A length of red cloth was purchased, then torn into small pieces. These were
tied to the ends of bamboo rods and issued to each man, together with
instructions on technique.
    It was not unlike fly-fishing, a gentle cast
that left the scraps of cloth bobbing on the surface of the reservoir. And the
frogs bit. Whether they were attracted by the color or by the cloth or by the
method of dragging it slowly across the water wasn’t made clear to me,
but, one after another, the frogs rose to the bait. By the time evening fell,
several large plastic bags had been filled.
    The idea was to take them
home the following day, to be cooked and eaten over the weekend. But that
night, the workmen were staying in a small hotel close to the building site. It
was a Friday, and the men went out to celebrate the end of a hard week, leaving
the frogs to amuse themselves in one of the hotel rooms.
    And amuse
themselves they did. Leaping from the restrictive confines of the plastic bags,
they enjoyed the freedom of the room. Signs of their passage were discovered
later—on pillows and bedspreads and night tables, over the top of the
television set, across the phone, everywhere. And then, no doubt made peckish
by their explorations, they had looked for something to eat. Passing up the
sheets and pillowcases, and not tempted by the carpet, they chose instead to
gorge on the wallpaper—a faded print made tender by the passage of years,
enlivened, no doubt, by a soupçon of mature, crispy glue.
    Returning after dinner, the workman whose room it was found the lower parts
of the walls stripped clean. Replete and sleepy frogs covered the floor,
blinking at the light and far from pleased at being disturbed. Collecting them
to put back in their bags took up a good part of the night. The workmen left
early the following morning, leaving the hotel management to puzzle over the
adjustments that had been made to the decor.
    It wasn’t the best
story to hear just before starting a dinner of frogs’ legs, and I looked
with a certain amount of suspicion at the plate that had been put in front of
me. The legs, which had been sautéed in white wine, were cream-colored
and flecked with parsley. They looked appetizing and smelled delicious, but I
couldn’t help wondering what kind of diet had made them so firm and well
rounded. Was wallpaper the secret ingredient? Old phone bills? Or had they been
fattened up on sheet after sheet of virginal top-quality Kleenex?
    “
Allez,”
said my neighbor. “With the
fingers.”
    In fact, as the tiny legs had been served on the bone,
using a knife and fork would have required the skills of a microsurgeon. So I
did as I was told, picking up a leg and taking my first tentative bite.
    Chicken? Not exactly. It seemed to have a finer texture than chicken, and
tasted smoother. It was moist, it was tender, and it was flavored with