AU GOUJON FOLICHON
I made out my bill, had it approved by the now hysterical madame, jumped into my boat and pulled away from the wreck. A mile below, a team passed me rattling along in the direction of the railroad station. On the front seat a bald-headed man with a newspaper bundle under his arm was gesticulating wildly to the driver. It was the maître d’hôtel.
Below the Mureaux upon an island I came across a small cabin of a restaurant in the middle of a garden patch. Seine nets were drying in the door-yard, and under the eaves of the house ran a sign reading in large letters AU GOUJON FOLICHON.
There was another excellent omelet to be had, and a friture de Seine of fresh and foolish goujons whose greediness early that very morning had proved their ruin. Madame in charge of this fisherman’s rest showed me her strawberry patch, still bearing fruit—quite a rarity for the season.
She had a brother-in-law in Brooklyn, America, did I know him? She insisted upon generously giving me all of her ripe strawberries. I must tell her brother-in-law if I met him I had seen her.
When I pushed off down the river the chimney of the Goujon Folichon was smoking with the frying of more ill-fated foolish goujons, and madame was waving bon voyage from the window.
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A RIVERSIDE FARM
There was a fête at Limay. The only hotel in this apology for a town was shaken by the trampling feet of dancing swains when I arrived. They informed me that the ball would continue all night and the next day. Inside the ballroom the town band pumped away amid the discordant shrieking of two cheap clarinets, the drone of a mournful baritone horn, and the thump of a bass drum. The effort was anything but conducive to sleep. I crossed the bridge and entered Mantes, a splendidly built old city with a rare Gothic cathedral.