Short Stories, vol 9 | Page 9

of all the food on which the animal has fed.
How much better food we could have if more attention were paid to
this!"
I laughed as I said:
"You are a gourmand?"
"Parbleu. It is only imbeciles who are not. One is a gourmand as one is
an artist, as one is learned, as one is a poet. The sense of taste, my
friend, is very delicate, capable of perfection, and quite as worthy of
respect as the eye and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is
deprived of an exquisite faculty, the faculty of discerning the quality of
food, just as one may lack the faculty of discerning the beauties of a
book or of a work of art; it means to be deprived of an essential organ,
of something that belongs to higher humanity; it means to belong to
one of those innumerable classes of the infirm, the unfortunate, and the
fools of which our race is composed; it means to have the mouth of an
animal, in a word, just like the mind of an animal. 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."
"What general?"
"General Blaumont! We had to have a statue. We are not 'the proud
people of Gisors' for nothing! So we discovered General de Blaumont.
Look in this bookseller's window."
He drew me towards the bookstore, where about fifteen red, yellow and
blue volumes attracted the eye. As I read the titles, I began to laugh
idiotically. They read:
Gisors, its origin, its future, by M. X. . . ., member of several learned
societies; History of Gisors, by the Abbe A . . . .; Gasors from