A Question of Loyalties [antikvár]

The other evening, for the first time since I came to live here two months ago, I crossed over into France. I took the little suburban train at the Gar des Eaux-Vives. I smoked a cigar as we clanked up the mountainside and then I descended at Monnetier, and strolled, still smoking, to the restaurant which the Baroness had recommended. It was, she said, 'in the country style, which has become ubiquitous, of course, but nevertheless this one is, I assure you, authentic'. I didn't really care about that; I was interested rather in my own sentiments; what it would feel like to be again in France. I live in Geneva now, because Switzerland is comfortable; you are valued simply according to the promptitude with which you settle your bills. And I am always prompt. The restaurant was quiet. Only two other tables were occupied. There was an American couple and a stout Frenchman who exuded bourgeois respectability. He wore the ribbon of the Légion d'Honneur in his buttonhole. It was absurd that in that ribbon, which is awarded to every postmaster and to every clerk who has shuffled papers for thirty years in the Ministry of This or That, I should see something denied me. Yet I did. The dinner was equally unremarkable. What they call 'mountain trout' - justifiably since the fish-farm will be situated on the mountainside - a tranche d'agneau in a sauce too sharp with too many peppers - which passes for peasant style - and then the choice between the inevitable flan, the peach or cheese which you can always buy in better condition in the market-place. The coffee was burned, and I sighed to think of the coffee, without chicory, which Hilda used to prepare for me at what I still think of as home. Then, I asked the bored proprietor if he had a marc de Provence. Provence not Burgundy, I insisted, knowing that he would prefer to give me the supposedly superior and more expensive variety.