In our little stove, heated to a cherry glow, we roast our maiden chicken. The first time we put it on the table it is not quite enough done. We peer at it anxiously, we probe at it cautiously, finally we decide to put it back for another quarter of an hour. But then—ye gods! What a bird! How plump and brown and savoury! How it sizzles in the amber gravy! Never, think we, have we tasted fowl so delicious. We eat it with reverence.
After that she makes one of the seven-and-thirty salads of that land of salads; then we have a dish of petits pois, and we finish off with a great golden brioche and red currant jam.
“Now,” I say, “we’ll drink to ourselves, and to our ’appy ’ome; and, by the gods, we’ll drink in champagne!”
With that I triumphantly produce a half-bottle of Mousseux that I have been hiding, a graceful bottle with a cap of gold. Appalling extravagance! Veuve Amiot! Who could tell it from Veuve Clicquot?—and it costs only a franc and a half.
Cut the wire! Watch the cork start up, slowly, slowly ... then— Pop! away it springs, and smacks the ceiling. Quickly I fill her a foaming glass, and we drink to “La France.” After that, sitting over the fire, we plunge long spongy biscuits into the bubbling wine that seems to seethe in fierce protest at being thus tormented. And if you do not think we are as happy as the joyous liquor we sip, you do not know Youth and Paris. To conclude the evening, we scurry off to the Cinema theatre as merry as children.
Most of the films are American, and what is my amazement to find that one of them, all cowboys, breeze, and virtue rewarded, is a cinematisation of my own book, Rattlesnake Ranch. Yes, there are my characters—the sheriff’s daughter, Mike the Mule-skinner, and the rest. A thrill runs down my back, almost a shiver.
“How do you like it?” I ask the girl.
“I love it. I love all sings Americaine now.”
“Really, it’s awful rubbish. You mustn’t judge America by things like that.”
“I love it,” she protests stoutly.