ot as spoken. I
likewise have difficulty in making out its meaning when I read it; but
in other regards I flatter myself that my knowledge of the language is
quite adequate. Certainly, as I have just stated, I managed to create
a pleasant sensation among my French hearers when I employed it in
conversation.

As I was saying, the general rule was that I should ask the name and
whereabouts of a house in the town where we might procure victuals;
and then, after a bit, when the laughing had died down, one of my
companions would break in and find out what we wanted to know.

The information thus secured probably led us to a tiny cottage of
mud-daubed wattles. Our hostess there might be a shapeless, wrinkled,
clumsy old woman. Her kitchen equipment might be confined to an open
fire and a spit, and a few battered pots.

Her larder might be most meagrely circumscribed as to variety, and
generally was. But she could concoct such savoury dishes for us--such
marvellous, golden-brown fried potatoes; such good soups; such savoury
omelets; such toothsome fragrant stews! Especially such stews!

For all we knew--or cared--the meat she put into her pot might have
been horse meat and the garnishments such green things as she had
plucked at the roadside; but the flavour of the delectable broth cured
us of any inclinations to make investigation as to the former stations
in life of its basic constituents. I am satisfied that, chosen at
random, almost any peasant housewife of France can take an old Palm
Beach suit and a handful of potherbs and, mingling these together
according to her own peculiar system, turn out a ragout fit for a
king. Indeed, it would be far too good for some kings I know of.

And if she had a worn-out bath sponge and the cork of a discarded
vanilla-extract bottle she, calling upon her hens for a little help in
the matter of eggs, could produce for dessert a delicious meringue,
with floating-island effects in it. I'd stake my life on her ability
to deliver.

If, on such an occasion as the one I have sought to describe, we were
perchance in the south of France or in the Cote-d'Or country, lying
over toward the Swiss border, we could count upon having a bait of
delicious strawberries to wind up with. But if perchance we had fared
into one of the northeastern provinces we were reasonably certain the
meal would be rounded out with helpings of a certain kind of cheese
that is indigenous to those parts. It comes in a fl