A
Person In France Desirous Of Making A Really Ostentatious Display
Of His Affluence, On Finding A Pearl In An Oyster, Would Swallow
The Pearl And Wear The Oyster On His Shirtfront.
That would stamp
him as a person of wealth.
However, I am not claiming that all French cookery is ultra-exorbitant
in price or of excessively low grade. We had one of the surprises
of our lives when, by direction of a friend who knew Paris, we
went to a little obscure cafe that was off the tourist route and
therefore - as yet - unspoiled and uncommercialized. This place
was up a back street near one of the markets; a small and smellsome
place it was, decorated most atrociously. In the front window,
in close juxtaposition, were a platter of French snails and a
platter of sticky confections full of dark spots. There was no
mistaking the snails for anything except snails; but the other
articles were either currant buns or plain buns that had been made
in an unscreened kitchen.
Within were marble-topped tables of the Louie-Quince period and
stuffy wall-seats of faded, dusty red velvet; and a waiter in his
shirtsleeves was wandering about with a sheaf of those long French
loaves tucked under his arm like golf sticks, distributing his
loaves among the diners. But somewhere in its mysterious and
odorous depths that little bourgeois cafe harbored an honest-to-goodness
cook. He knew a few things about grilling a pig's knuckle - that
worthy person.
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