ever more apparent, French words grew ever more acid.
The Americans were swamped in matters of art, literature, perfume. Paris was the hub of the universe, leather goods, materials, and fashions. France was the arbiter of man’s good taste, love songs, love-making, crystal, silver, and political aplomb.
The French astutely avoided counterattacks in sports, education, science, production, democracy, and military strength, which indeed was a sore point with Frenchmen.
The French used the word “pedantic” quite often to describe a number of things non-French. The Americans insisted Paris had the rudest, most self-centered, gouging citizenry in the world.
André became hungry.
He mounted the stairs to the grand dining room and pecked away at the banks of caviar, pâté de foie gras, salmon, cheese soufflé, truffles, feuilletée, remindful to him of waste. André, the tired man at the embassy, disdained a civil service in which half the time of a French official was spent at ceremonies and the other half at parties, and they weren’t the people’s servants, but rather their masters. He wanted to go home. There was a half-night’s work undone.
The Ambassador wended his way to the grand foyer, walked up the staircase to the balcony. The orchestra sounded out for attention. Guests drifted in from the music room, the salons, from the terrace and lawns and dining room. Fat little René d’Arcy was framed between a tricolor and an immense portrait of President Pierre La Croix. He raised his glass.
“I offer a toast to the oldest unbroken alliance in the Western world. To the unity of France and the United States.”
After his oration he retreated to the Green Room, sanctum of the very special. Empire furnishings, upholstered in green silks, in Egyptian shapes, were topped with Napoleonic crowns. René d’Arcy commanded hushed awe as he went through his famed cigar-lighting ritual.
A cigar was carried in with great pomp on a sterling-silver tray and its end nipped by a sterling-silver cutter. A servant held a candle in a sterling-silver holder. For a full five minutes d’Arcy passed the cigar over the flame from end to end, warming it ... just so. Without puffing, he darted the tip into the flame until it lit itself. A great “ah” arose around the Green Room for the masterful performance.
Courvoisier Reserve, a hundred and fifty years old, was served, and those in the inner sanctum prevailed on d’Arcy to tell a few spicy French jokes and please them with his imitations of Churchill and Hitler.
André walked out on the balcony with Mollie Spearman, once a crude semiprecious stone who had come from the West fifteen years earlier and acquired the finish of a polished gem. Mollie and André were each other’s kind of favorite people. Just a bit away from them Nicole was speaking to a younger military attaché of the Canadian Embassy.
She was no beauty, his Nicole, but she made full use of what she had and any man would find her desirable. Nicole was poised and elegant and she flirted in measured terms.
André wondered, as he always had, if she had lovers. It was part of the hurt inflicted by his own mother, a legacy of being orphaned that his father bore like an unhealed wound.
It would be a small chore for him to really find out about Nicole’s fidelity but rather beneath his dignity. But where on God’s earth would this precarious road end for them?
Would Nicole be seized by a desperation to prove her desirability, and thus fulfill his fantasy? He had tried so often to let her know she was loved but, somehow, Nicole never really listened or understood. Perhaps, as he told her, he was so obsessed with the ghost of his mother that he loved her and unconsciously rejected her at the same moment. He did not know.
Marsh McKittrick came alongside him. He excused himself to Mollie Spearman.
“Boris Kuznetov has had a heart attack. He’s at Bethesda Naval Hospital.”
“Oh, dear God,” André
The Americans were swamped in matters of art, literature, perfume. Paris was the hub of the universe, leather goods, materials, and fashions. France was the arbiter of man’s good taste, love songs, love-making, crystal, silver, and political aplomb.
The French astutely avoided counterattacks in sports, education, science, production, democracy, and military strength, which indeed was a sore point with Frenchmen.
The French used the word “pedantic” quite often to describe a number of things non-French. The Americans insisted Paris had the rudest, most self-centered, gouging citizenry in the world.
André became hungry.
He mounted the stairs to the grand dining room and pecked away at the banks of caviar, pâté de foie gras, salmon, cheese soufflé, truffles, feuilletée, remindful to him of waste. André, the tired man at the embassy, disdained a civil service in which half the time of a French official was spent at ceremonies and the other half at parties, and they weren’t the people’s servants, but rather their masters. He wanted to go home. There was a half-night’s work undone.
The Ambassador wended his way to the grand foyer, walked up the staircase to the balcony. The orchestra sounded out for attention. Guests drifted in from the music room, the salons, from the terrace and lawns and dining room. Fat little René d’Arcy was framed between a tricolor and an immense portrait of President Pierre La Croix. He raised his glass.
“I offer a toast to the oldest unbroken alliance in the Western world. To the unity of France and the United States.”
After his oration he retreated to the Green Room, sanctum of the very special. Empire furnishings, upholstered in green silks, in Egyptian shapes, were topped with Napoleonic crowns. René d’Arcy commanded hushed awe as he went through his famed cigar-lighting ritual.
A cigar was carried in with great pomp on a sterling-silver tray and its end nipped by a sterling-silver cutter. A servant held a candle in a sterling-silver holder. For a full five minutes d’Arcy passed the cigar over the flame from end to end, warming it ... just so. Without puffing, he darted the tip into the flame until it lit itself. A great “ah” arose around the Green Room for the masterful performance.
Courvoisier Reserve, a hundred and fifty years old, was served, and those in the inner sanctum prevailed on d’Arcy to tell a few spicy French jokes and please them with his imitations of Churchill and Hitler.
André walked out on the balcony with Mollie Spearman, once a crude semiprecious stone who had come from the West fifteen years earlier and acquired the finish of a polished gem. Mollie and André were each other’s kind of favorite people. Just a bit away from them Nicole was speaking to a younger military attaché of the Canadian Embassy.
She was no beauty, his Nicole, but she made full use of what she had and any man would find her desirable. Nicole was poised and elegant and she flirted in measured terms.
André wondered, as he always had, if she had lovers. It was part of the hurt inflicted by his own mother, a legacy of being orphaned that his father bore like an unhealed wound.
It would be a small chore for him to really find out about Nicole’s fidelity but rather beneath his dignity. But where on God’s earth would this precarious road end for them?
Would Nicole be seized by a desperation to prove her desirability, and thus fulfill his fantasy? He had tried so often to let her know she was loved but, somehow, Nicole never really listened or understood. Perhaps, as he told her, he was so obsessed with the ghost of his mother that he loved her and unconsciously rejected her at the same moment. He did not know.
Marsh McKittrick came alongside him. He excused himself to Mollie Spearman.
“Boris Kuznetov has had a heart attack. He’s at Bethesda Naval Hospital.”
“Oh, dear God,” André
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