IV.

The shady patch of garden at the side of the inn is an unqualified blessing.  Roses overhang the paths, and green branches bend over its plot of grass.  We have found the little dining-room dark and rather stuffy, have thrown open the windows and shutters, have confidently spoken for an artistic meal, and can now ruminate approvingly upon rest and refreshment, the sweet restorers of life.  How should one tolerate its zigzaggings without the gentle recurrence of these its aids?

The kitchen opens invitingly from the hallway, and presently some of us drift indoors and group around its entrance.  There is a hospitable stir of preparation within; a blazing and clattering that charm both eye and ear.  The landlady and her daughter are busy with a fiery fury.  We grow bolder.  We crave permission to enter and watch operations.  The old woman pauses and looks up as she cracks an egg on the edge of a plate, and then assents, willingly enough, but with unmistakable astonishment.  She is used to predatory raids of visitors but evidently not to this inquiring spirit.  Yet purposeful travel, we might tell her, is hundred-eyed and has glances for just such matters as this.  It seeks out cities and scenery and history; but it seeks out life no less.  We are gaining impressions which cannot be drawn from books, as we come close to these homely ways and habits, questioning, appreciating the people we meet, understanding their capacities and objects and limitations.  One sees the breaking of an egg; he can see, besides, a thousand accompaniments to the event,—­a biography summed up in an act.

At present, we note the breaking with rather more concern than the biography.  Egg after egg is being deftly chipped, and its lucent content dropped first upon a plate,—­a thrifty half-way station for possible unsoundness,—­and then slid off into a clean-looking oval saucepan.  The pan is then hung from an unfamiliar variety of crane close over the fire, and the contents wheedled and teased by a skillful spoon and bribed with salt and butter and a sprinkle of parsley.  And even as we watch, the golden mass melts together; sighs and quivers, and thickens into wrinkles; bodies itself slowly into form and shape, under crafty oscillation; and is at last dexterously rolled out, a burnished ingot, upon the long platter, with a flourish that bespeaks practice and confidence.  The stiff face of the old woman involuntarily relaxes with honest pride; she looks up half unconsciously for approval, and we all applaud galore.

Manifestly, externals vary, fundamentals persist.  Barring details of place and process, the culinary art follows much the same laws and works out much the same results in this remote Department of the French Republic as in the Middle States of the American.