French Lessons by Peter Mayle Read Free Book Online Page B

a
well-judged tingle of garlic—altogether different from those explosively
seasoned thighs I remembered eating years before.
    I finished the first
leg and put it down, conscious that my neighbor was watching closely.
    “No, no,” he said. “Suck the bone.” He lifted one
hand to his lips and bunched his fingertips into a bouquet. “It’s
good.”
     
    Walking back through the streets of
Vittel after dinner, there was no escaping the frog. There he was, crouching in
the windows of patisseries, fashioned from marzipan or chocolate; starring in
all the menus that were displayed outside restaurants; bright green and
inappropriately furry as a prize in the shooting galleries. I stopped by the
grenouillade monstre
in the Salle du Moulin, and there he was again,
three feet high, wearing a top hat and clutching a bottle, beaming across the
room above a low-lying fog bank of cigarette smoke. I wouldn’t have been
surprised to encounter him, jaunty and relieved, in the
toilettes
publiques.
But the tiled walls were bare of any humorous posters, possibly
because evacuation, being part of the cure, is not a joking matter in
Vittel.
    There was a uniformed presence in town that night—not,
as one might have expected, patrolling gendarmes to make sure the revelry
didn’t get out of hand, but a squad of Pastis 51 salesmen. Distinguished
by their red jackets and their cheerful diligence with the bottle, they were
offering
dégustations:
a free nip to anyone feeling the need of
a change from beer or Riesling. One overrefreshed gentleman, the beneficiary of
several nips, stood in the doorway of a bar, calling loudly for an accordion so
that he could entertain passersby. The owner of the bar countered by turning up
the volume of his jukebox. Affronted, the would-be accordionist glared at the
source of the noise, lighted the wrong end of a filter-tipped cigarette, and
lurched off in search of artistic fulfillment elsewhere.
    Sometime after
midnight, the crowds had thinned, and I went back to the hotel. Leaning out of
my window, I heard the distant fairground music give a wheeze and an electronic
grunt before coming to a stop. The night sky was encouraging, clear enough to
give some hope for good weather the following day, with the light from a
solitary star coming and going through wisps of cloud like blinks of celestial
neon.
     
    Vittel and its visitors were in luck. The
morning started bright and sunny, and it was almost hot by the time I reached
the Palais des Congrès just before nine. While I was waiting in line to
register, I was handed a list of the
confréries
that were
putting in an official appearance to give fraternal support. There were
fifty-seven of them altogether, most of them from various parts of France, some
with highly impressive titles, like the Chevaliers du Brie and the Companions
of the Black Sausage. The rest of Europe was represented by
confrères
from Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, and
Holland—but, as I had already discovered, nobody from Britain but
myself.
    The idea of a convivial association based on the enjoyment of
gastronomic specialties seems to hold no great appeal for the British, and I
wondered why not. It may be true that we don’t produce as many edible
treasures as the French, but we have our moments. Why aren’t they
officially marked? Where are the Companions of the Fish and Chip? The Honorable
Brotherhood of Yorkshire Pudding? The Noble Order of Cheddar? The Commanders of
the Winkle and the Whelk? The Friends of the Jellied Eel?
    “
Bonjour,”
said a voice from below me.
“You’re the Englishman.”
    I looked down, to find that
I’d reached the head of the line and the check-in desk. A smartly dressed
man smiled up at me, introduced himself as Jean Pierre Roussel, and told me
that I couldn’t have a drink until I’d answered a few questions
about my background and signed on as a future
confrère.
With
these formalities over, he nodded me over to the bar.
    Alcohol with
breakfast is