Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/233

 a cold dish, a sweet, dessert, and cheese. No need to mention the cooking. That is sure everywhere to be excellent, though even among French cooks there are grades. Here you will of a surety not be struck by the pervasion of economy, but that of plenty. You will understand why the comfortably-off French, when they lunch at British tables, lament that they are starved. Indeed, when you have the good luck to partake of French hospitality, you will find it the best in the world. At no tables will you eat so well and so plentifully as at the tables of your French friends, and in no land on earth will you enjoy such delightful conversation as theirs, where they know how to speak and have something to say. In England people are always on their guard, are often afraid to talk their best, lest they shall prove bores or eccentrics. In France the bore is the person who has nothing to say, and the eccentric is thanked for frankly revealing himself as such. Only be intelligent, be individual and interesting, and then you may rattle on to your liking, and provided you tumble with glory, you may choose between the devil and the deep sea with equal unconcern. The people around you, the most susceptible and sympathetic to individual value, will be far too busy listening to what you have to say—provided it is worth the saying—to give a thought to picking you to pieces.