JOST A MON

Lourdes also proceeded to demonstrate, to my amazement, that (at least in this region of the stratosphere) there was no apparent relation between the amount of food its inhabitants put away and the ligne of their figures. To put it bluntly, she gorged as though she had skipped lunch, but came out of it looking like the Sugar Plum Fairy, albeit one with truly wonderful breasts. She wanted some caviar en blini. She insisted that I try some of her duck liver, not forgetting one or two of its abundant nuggets of black truffle. If Laurent had had ortolans en caissette, those tiny and rare buntings served whole in fluted paper cases, I am sure her relentless and champing jaws would have disposed of half a dozen before proceeding to the civet de lièvre avec pommes soufflées, and thence to the tart of Anjou pears with a little rhyming pear sorbet on the side, and finally, like some marathon runner breaking the tape, to the immense trolley of cheeses. She ate her way through all this without the slightest appearance of strain. It was I who sweated and inwardly groaned, for my menu had prices on it whereas, in the chauvinistic manner of French restaurants then, hers did not.