Just such a place of seclusion and good cooking is the “Père La Thuille” in Montmartre. It is often a pleasure to dine in a room devoid of gilt and tinsel. The Père La Thuille is restful in this respect. The cuisine is perfect and the wine very old.
THE KITCHEN OF A CHEAP TABLE D’HÔTE
At one of the tables in the rectangular dining-room a celebrated diva whose bodice glitters in gems is dining with monsieur, the aged director of a gas company. Several empty tables away another elderly gentleman is filling Mademoiselle Fifi’s glass of champagne. Half hidden in another corner of the long leather settee a lady with delicate features and frank, intelligent eyes pours forth her soul and the remainder of a bottle to a well-groomed man at her side. The light from the shaded candles shows more clearly his strong fine hands. Now the little finger of his companion touches his seal ring quite unconsciously, as one would give an accent by a gesture to a confession. For a moment he covers her tiny hand with his own. Poor devil! he must return to his regiment to-morrow and, what is still sadder, the lady is married.
The New York Dairy Lunch, with its mirrored and marbled bathroom decoration, its elevating Bible texts, and depressing “sinkers,” and its dyspeptic griddle-cakes cooked in the window, would never make a success with Parisians. One of the most doleful sights I have seen in Paris was a sad-looking gentleman in black sitting at a cold marble-topped table of an expensive patisserie lunching on a weak cup of tea and a plate of cream-puffs—Chacun son goût!
There exist here, however, “Express Bars” along the boulevards, where by dropping two sous in a slot you are permitted to rob the nickel-plated chicken house installed beneath of any of a dozen different articles, from a baba au rhum to a glass of beer. But Parisians stop at these places very much as they would to hear a phonograph, or as French children stop for their goûter at four o’clock in the cake shops, or as men and women of all classes drop in for the celebrated fruits in spirits dispensed at the famous solid silver bar of La Mère Moreau.
The French never hurry over dinner. The pleasure of dining must not be spoiled by haste. It is an hour which nothing postpones. If anything serious is to be decided upon, Parisians dine first and then think the matter over. Perhaps after all they are right, for are we not at our best in heart and spirit when we have dined wisely? Anger, hatred, even the green monster jealousy, fade away with the progress of a good dinner.
Drawn by Sancha
LE PLONGEUR