“One asks one’s self how
all this decoration this luxury of fair and chiselled marble, survived the
French Revolution. An hour of liberty in
the choir of Brou would have been a carnival for the image-breakers.
The well-fed Bressois are
surely a good-natured people. I call
them well-fed both on general and on particular grounds. Their province has the most savory aroma, and
I found an opportunity to test its reputation.
I walked back into the town
from the church (there was really nothing to be seen by the way), and as the
hour of the midday breakfast had struck, directed my attention to the inn. The table d’hôte was going on, and a
gracious, bustling, talkative landlady welcomed me. I had an excellent repast—the best repast
possible—which consisted simply of boiled eggs and bread and butter. It was the quality of these simple ingredients
that made the occasion memorable. The
eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed.
“La plus belle fille du
monde”, as the French proverb says, “ne peut donner que ce qu’elle a”; and it might seem that an egg which has
succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of
it. But there was a bloom of
punctuality, so to speak, about these eggs of Bourg, as if it had been the
intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptly served. “Nous sommes en Bresse, et le beurre n’est
pas mauvais”, the landlady said, with a sort of dry coquetry, as she placed the
article before me. It was the poetry of
butter, and I ate a pound of two of it; after which I came away with a strange
mixture of impressions of late Gothic sculpture and thick tartines.”
Henry James, A Little Tour
In France (Ch. 33, "Bourg-en-Bresse").
NOTE: When you know that the real thing is the
remotest possibility, armchair traveling works well, especially reading en plein air with your human and animal
tribe close by.
Almost-autumn all day has
been announcing its imminence, and an apéritif,
the sounds of the Eagles game in the next room, and life's triple
pleasures of breathing, seeing colors (with eyes both open and closed), and
scenting make everything sort of ok for now.
There was an excellent,
grim and clear-eyed editorial in the New
York Sun today limning the implications of the Syria mess, which included a
Winston Churchill quotation (spoken in the House of Commons following the appeasement
at Munich) that I hadn't heard before, but I know I will never forget. The article made me remember that collection
of fake commercials Paul Verhoeven created for RoboCop showing the cheapness, falseness, and inhumanity of
contemporary life and its general absence of moral values.
You remember how they all
ended -- with the punchline:
“I’d buy That for a dollar.”
I'd
Buy That For A Dollar (Link)
