A man who cannot distinguish one kind of lobster from another; a herring—­that admirable fish that has all the flavors, all the odors of the sea—­from a mackerel or a whiting; and a Cresane from a Duchess pear, may be compared to a man who should mistake Balzac for Eugene Sue; a symphony of Beethoven for a military march composed by the bandmaster of a regiment; and the Apollo Belvidere for the statue of General de Blaumont.

“Who is General de Blaumont?”

“Oh, that’s true, you do not know.  It is easy to tell that you do not belong to Gisors.  I told you just now, my dear boy, that they called the inhabitants of this town ‘the proud people of Gisors,’ and never was an epithet better deserved.  But let us finish breakfast first, and then I will tell you about our town and take you to see it.”

He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of wine which he gazed at affectionately as he replaced the glass on the table.

It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his cheeks flushed, his eyes eager, and his whiskers spreading round his mouth as it kept working.

He made me eat until I was almost choking.  Then, as I was about to return to the railway station, he seized me by the arm and took me through the streets.  The town, of a pretty, provincial type, commanded by its citadel, the most curious monument of military architecture of the seventh century to be found in France, overlooks, in its turn, a long, green valley, where the large Norman cows graze and ruminate in the pastures.

The doctor quoted: 

“’Gisors, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the department of Eure, mentioned in Caesar’s Commentaries:  Caesaris ostium, then Caesartium, Caesortium, Gisortium, Gisors.’  I shall not take you to visit the old Roman encampment, the remains of which are still in existence.”

I laughed and replied: 

“My dear friend, it seems to me that you are affected with a special malady that, as a doctor, you ought to study; it is called the spirit of provincialism.”

He stopped abruptly.

“The spirit of provincialism, my friend, is nothing but natural patriotism,” he said.  “I love my house, my town and my province because I discover in them the customs of my own village; but if I love my country, if I become angry when a neighbor sets foot in it, it is because I feel that my home is in danger, because the frontier that I do not know is the high road to my province.  For instance, I am a Norman, a true Norman; well, in spite of my hatred of the German and my desire for revenge, I do not detest them, I do not hate them by instinct as I hate the English, the real, hereditary natural enemy of the Normans; for the English traversed this soil inhabited by my ancestors, plundered and ravaged it twenty times, and my aversion to this perfidious people was transmitted to me at birth by my father.  See, here is the statue of the general.”