“I don't know.…”
Mama shook her head. “These English… I don't know what kind of people they are. Here I expected you to meet an earl, or a kind rich man, or something, and you fall in love with a hairdresser! Even Aunt Tillie had better taste in her youth.”
“Eric wants to marry me!”
Mama put her finger to her mouth and rolled her eyes in my direction, an the talk stopped. So we went out an met Mr. Bloodbater in the lobby. Mr. Bloodbater was to be our guide in Paris. He was a bald little Englishman who hadn't been in England for twenty years. He guided Americans and old retire English officers through Paris… that is, those who didn't want to see the dives; Mr. Bloodbater was a gentleman from Oxford, and didn't show people thrills. He was best in the Tuileries, and among the artists of the cafés aroun the Place du Tertre, where he sold us fake Daumier lithographs.
At l'heure du cocktail he took us to the Café des Deux Magots to look at sunlit sinners. He would have nothing to do with vice after dark. And like all pretty women, Mama and Aunt Fran were stared at. French man power seemed to pass fifty years making lew gestures at passing strangers, instead of trying to save the nation. Mr. Blood-bater didn't like the French upper class very much, and he didn't like the French middle class very much, and his ideas on what was wrong with the bank an church groups were very interesting.
While Mama and Fran drank bocks and stared back coldly at the passing French manhood, poor Mr. Bloodbater had to address himself to me. I still have (marked down on the cover of my Natural History) his words about the coming trouble of the world:
“Is the world but a perpetual caricature of its own progress, a not very witty contradiction of what it thinks it is? Are pretense and hypocrisies always to soil our world…?”
“Have a bock, Mr. Bloodbater,” sai Mama… “Stevie is too young for deep thoughts.”
“To be sure,” said Mr. Bloodbater, and sank his face philosophically into a huge bock.
Aunt Fran finished a letter she was writing to her new love, and Mama folded her arms and shook her head an wondered what she was going to do with Aunt Fran. Mama loved Papa, and no other man existed for her. A wildbearded Frenchman came over an bowed to Mama, and Mama turned to me with great dignity and opened her guidebook and read the words of a French song:
“En avant, soldats chrétiens, En avant à la guerre…”
Mr. Bloodbater said, “An old French-Norman form of chant. Tenth Century.”
We were all impressed. That night on our way to dinner we walked into a group of Salvation Army singers… and they were singing, “En avant, soldats chrétiens…!”
Mama said to Mr. Bloodbater, “Why, it's Onward, Christian Soldiers!”
Mr. Bloodbater nodded. “Shows you how far back these folk tunes go. I'll order the dinner.”
“No, thank you,” said Mama. An Mr. Bloodbater saw that he had really lost face, and he buried his lost face in a lobster.
It was a huge lobster, “The size an color of a new-born child,” Mama sai… and she wouldn't have it.
She liked the look of something written as Merlans à la Pluche Verte on the menu. She had always liked veal, an she was not pleased when they put shirred whiting in front of us. But later Mama and I grew fond of the dish, an had it often back home… if Papa was in the mood to make it. (Mama was a dreadful cook.)
In a shirred egg dish, cook fresh whiting in white wine, real virgin oil (not the peanut or cottonseed “just as good” stuff), one clove of garlic, lemon juice, and one slice of red onion. When the liquid is almost all swallowed by the whiting, pour over it a sauce made of fish stock with sweet butter melted into it, flour, minced chives and parsley, an some more lemon juice.
Mama was getting bolder… she let Mr. Bloodbater order for her a white Margaux wine with the dish. The cork was the pride of my bottle cork collection for a long time.
A few days later, when I was beginning to see that there were no real citizens of Paris—only Provençals, Basques, Gascons, and Auvergnats—Aunt Fran came into the breakfast room of the hotel one morning and said brightly, “Guess what?”
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