French Lessons Read Online Free PDF

traces of
Latin and Greek to be found in the dialect, but the overall sound is like a
more orotund version of French, filled with wonderful rolling words:
escoundoun
and
moulounado
and
cauto-cauto
. Apart
from
amen,
there was only one word in the entire sermon I could
identify for sure. It was, not surprisingly,
rabasse,
the truffle, and
it was making its presence felt more and more strongly throughout the church as
collection baskets started going up and down the rows. A basket was passed to
the man next to me. He held it in both hands like a chalice, lowered his head,
and took a deep sniff before unwrapping the aluminum foil from his own
contribution and popping it into the basket with the other truffles.
    To
encourage us in our giving, the choir performed a chant to Saint Antoine. And
he was left in no doubt about what was being asked of him:
    Bon
Saint Antoine, donne-nous

Des truffes en
abondance

Que leur odeur et leur bon
goût

Fassent aimer la Provence.
    In other
words, Give us truffles. Lots of truffles.
    This was not the simple cry
of greed that it might appear to be. If Saint Antoine had done his stuff, there
would be plenty of truffles in circulation. And the more there were, the more
the house of the Lord would benefit, because, following tradition, the truffles
collected would be auctioned off after the service, with all proceeds going to
charity and the church.
    The donations were taken back to be counted.
Those baskets that I could see looked comfortably prosperous, filled with an
extravagant salad of truffles and large-denomination banknotes. With God now
having been served by mammon, the congregation rose, and the choir sent us on
our way with Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Outside, the rain
had held off—“Divine providence,” I heard one pious old
truffler mutter as he looked up at the sky—and the auction could take
place as planned in the open air, outside the Hôtel de Ville.
    The
center of operations was a table in the square, and with the crowd beginning to
gather, the auctioneer climbed up to stand on top. He was one of the
confrères,
a gentleman who would certainly have walked off with
the
grand prix
for the most impressive mustache of the day. It was an
altogether-splendid appendage: luxuriant, with a fine upward, gravity-defying
curl, its wingspan almost as wide as the brim of his
confrère’
s black hat—a virtuoso among
mustaches.
    Rumors of the day’s collection began to pass through
the crowd, and the news was not good. Buyers were going to have to dig deeply
into their pockets, because the contents of the baskets reflected this
year’s disappointing crop. There were barely three kilos (not quite seven
pounds) of truffles. Last year there had been seven kilos (more than fifteen
pounds). Prices would therefore be high. But according to Monsieur Escoffier,
the octogenarian
confrère,
it would be money well spent.
“La truffe,”
he was heard to say,
“ça
rend les femmes plus gentilles et les hommes plus galants.”
The
bonus of kinder women and more gallant men was surely worth a little
extra.
    Giving each side of his mustache an upward flick with the back
of his hand, the auctioneer got down to business. With the aplomb of a veteran
from Sotheby’s, he prepared his audience for an expensive morning.
“Rain didn’t come in the summer when it should have,” he
said. “And so truffles are scarce. Extremely scarce. Now, as you all
know, the cost of rarity is high. But”—he spread his hands, palms
up, and shrugged at the crowd—“you can always economize on your
wine.”
    He held up the first truffle for all to see, and a bid of
nine hundred francs came from the front of the crowd. The auctioneer peered at
the bidder with an expression of scornful amazement. “Can I believe what
I hear? A miserable nine hundred francs? This monster weighs two hundred and
twenty grams. And it’s spotless, ready for the omelette. Not a trace of
earth on it.” He looked down from his