Day Eleven: On the Nature of Heroism
Oh maaaan. I am never eating again. Lying here like a boa that's swallowed a sheep after Madame's three-star, twenty-course dinner. Okay, it just seemed like twenty courses. When Monsieur was urging more cheese on me near the end, how I regretted that my limited language skills prevented me from informing him that he was beckoning me to a fate that would be unpleasant to more persons in the dining room than just me.
Si vous me donneriez plus du fromage, il faut me decrotter des murs.
(SEE voo muh duhn-er-EE-ay ploo duh frow-MAHJ, ill fow muh DAY-KROW-TAY day moohr.)
"If you give me any more cheese, you will be scraping me off the walls."
And I shall always regard finishing the whole of that sorbet du cassis as a sheer act of heroism...
But begin at the beginning, missy. I'm sorry to say, the humpty dumpty bed retarded my efforts to get to sleep last night -- I felt too much a prey to gravity -- until I got the brilliant idea of reversing my head and my feet. Dropped off instantly thereafter.
I ordered up a petit dejeuner at about nine-thirty -- it was brought up by a miniature gentleman of about fourteen (one imagines young Jean-Claude begging to spend his spring vacation learning to be a grand traiteur like Grammy...). A perfect meal -- the hottest of hot chocolate, crispy fresh bread, yogurt, preserved figs... even down to the acacia honey and "Grands Ecrivains du France" sugarcubes -- I hope to be forgiven the larceny of lifting Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alphonse Daudet, George Sand and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I got out of the room five minutes ahead of the chambermaid and turned the Kid towards the west and Le Vigan. Maybe I would stop at the Musee de Soie in St. Hippolyte-du-Fort, and maybe I wouldn't. (Wouldn't, as it turned out. I do know an awful lot about silk manufacturing already.) In the west, the trees are a little bolder in putting out leaf -- I don't know if there's a climate difference or the varieties of tree are dissimilar. All in all, it was a pretty landscape to be bowling through, trying to fix in the memory the lyrics of one of the great unknown torchsongs of the 20th century, "Il Parle d'Amour Comme Il Parle des Voitures" -- as well as enjoying the funkatronic French Tom Jones version of "Si Vous Allez au San Francisco (Pretez-Vous des Fleurs dans Vos Cheveux)."
The Musee du Desert in Mas Soubeyran is quite a large, well-organized museum for such a recherche subject as the history of Protestant persecution in the Cevennes. The walls of the first few rooms are almost entirely covered with royal edicts against assembly, arrest warrants, death sentences and forfeitures of property. Later rooms are decorated with over-sentimentalized popular prints of tempest-toss'd Huguenots wringing their hands. Collection includes literally hundreds of bibles, including the famous "chignon bibles" small enough to stash in your bun; scribbled secret registers of marriages and baptisms celebrated in the desert; a whole series of immensely cunning implements for worship in the desert -- "chairs du desert", which are portable pulpits that look something like a stepladder married to a podium, communion cups that unscrew instantly into three easily-secreted pieces.
Most poignant were the final rooms, where lists of names detailed who died for the faith, who was imprisoned for the faith, who went into exile for the faith -- one room for each. The room of the galerians, the galley slaves, had an exact reproduction of a galley oar hung from the ceiling -- this was not the Harvard sculling team. Written in tiny black ink the names and fates of 5,000 galerians -- when they were taken, condemned, whether they were freed or died in chains.
Of course there was a room for the prisoners of Constance too -- letters of Marie Durand and a reproduction of her "Register." (Someone has spraypainted this on the road leading to Mas Soubeyran.)
After my usual late afternoon/early evening rest and review, I had a deep tepid bath, dressed and declared myself ready as an antagonist for Madame's dinner.
The salad by itself would have been heaven enough. Lettuce obviously fresh from someone's garden, covered with walnuts and a light, ever-so-slightly-creamy vinaigrette... and in the center, on a round crunchy piece of toast, a perfect wheel of warm fromage pur chevre. I fell upon it with the fervor of a Maenad.
Then the truite aux herbes was wrapped in a paper-thin -- and I do mean paper-thin -- crust of pastry, the interior having been seeded with dill and tarragon with the skill of a jeweller -- accompanied by a nummcious little carrot quiche thing and an even more nummcious little asparagus quiche thing.
The dining salon was a lovely blend of old and new -- most particularly catching the eye, the heavy spiral ironwork of the lamps and tabletop candelabra -- the center of each candelabra being enlarged enough to admit of a morsel of potting soil and a tiny green plant -- peppers, this season.