You will doubtless
recall the description, as so frequently and graphically dished
up by the inspired writers of travelogue stuff--the picturesque,
tumbledown place, where on a cloth of coarse linen--white like
snow--old Marie, her wrinkled face abeam with hospitality and
kindness, places the delicious omelet she has just made, and brings
also the marvelous salad and the perfect fowl, and the steaming
hot coffee fragrant as breezes from Araby the Blest, and the vin
ordinaire that is even as honey and gold to the thirsty throat.
You must know that passage?
We went to see for ourselves. At a distance of half a day's
automobile run from Paris we found an establishment answering to
the plans and specifications. It was shoved jam-up against the
road, as is the French custom; and it was surrounded by a high,
broken wall, on which all manner of excrescences in the shape of
tiny dormers and misshapen little towers hung, like Texas ticks
on the ears of a quarantined steer. Within the wall the numerous
ruins that made up the inn were thrown together any fashion, some
facing one way, some facing the other way, and some facing all
ways at once; so that, for the housefly, so numerously encountered
on these premises, it was but a short trip and a merry one from
the stable to the dining room and back again.
Sure enough, old Marie was on the job.
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