The sign of this inn, like that of so many in the fair land of France,
was “Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon”; and who Aymon was, and what his four
sons did, I wonder how many English people know. Aymon was the Duke of
Dordogne, and his sons were Renaud, Guiscard, Alard, and Richard, and
you may read of them in a twelfth-century French romance and in Victor
Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_. So much I can state, but no more. There
are certain things that one’s memory will not retain, and the story
of Aymon and his four sons is one of them. I have equal difficulty in
remembering for certain whether the pen is mightier than the sword or
the sword mightier than the pen.
But Aymon and his quartette matter nothing. What does matter is that
in a French inn you may be as witty as you can, as intelligent as you
can, but some one there will be more intelligent, more witty. We came
to this inn, which is some three leagues distant from Paris, about
five in the afternoon on a bitter, snowy day. We made the journey in a
motor-car through the bleakest country I ever saw, chiefly over _pavé_,
right from the heart of Paris, and the sign of Aymon and his family
was the first to greet our eyes, strain them as we might. Hence, since
there are few pleasures to compare with that of entering a warm inn
while one is on a cold journey, we were very happy when the door closed
behind us, and the rays of the circular stove in the middle of the room
drew us to it like tentacles.
Where was the _patron_? (We had heard of the _patron_ as a character.)
The _patron_, being also the _chef_, was in the kitchen--a vast, clean
kitchen, with a glowing fire, and myriad copper pots on the walls; but
he very willingly called in a lieutenant, and then brought certain
hot cordials and himself to our table. Consider an English innkeeper
being found at five in the afternoon in a spotless kitchen, himself
in spotless white, and leaving it to discuss the world at large with
two guests of a few minutes! For that is what we did--we discussed
affairs. He had the “Petit Journal” before him, and we went through the
pictures, and he dismissed men and matters with grunts and chuckles.
He knew the world. He had lived and he knew. Napoleon III had once
dined in this very inn, and a copper pipkin was still preserved on the
kitchen wall in which part of the Imperial meal had been cooked; but it
was nothing to our little host. President Fallières lunched there only
a few months ago--in that very chair--but that also was nothing to
him. Life is an individual business; life comes first; and an innkeeper
has as much life to live as any one else, be it Emperor or President.
He is a short man, between fifty and sixty, with close-cropped,
grizzled hair, a grizzled imperial, and a fierce, grizzled moustache
in perpetual danger of being burned by his cigarette. As a young
man he was cook to his officers’ mess, chiefly in Algiers, where he
had a touch of sun, which accounts for a certain excitability and
nervousness. (At a performance of “Biribi” at Antoine’s Theatre he
had to be led out, it was so true and he so overwrought.) He would
certainly have written poetry had his parents been rich. Trouble also
he would as assuredly have plunged into; and indeed his life is not
too smooth as it is, for he is terribly susceptible (those African
sunstrokes!) and Madame had to keep both eyes very wide open before she
ceased to care.
In his youth, before his Army period, he had been a valet in London,
in Half-Moon Street, and though it was only for a few weeks and he
speaks no English, it brings him into touch with English people a
little quicker; and after a glass or two, if he likes you and Madame
is absent, he will tell you of how the only woman he ever really
loved was the English girl that he met in London. But this vein is
not to be encouraged, since it ends in tears. For the most part
he is a mocker--laughing and cynical--appraising everything and
everybody in modern life with a French shrug or a French gesture, never
wholly serious and never wholly thoughtless, living in that busy,
materialistic French way that makes such contented citizens and such an
efficient nation and is yet the despair of every moralist in Tunbridge
Wells.
After a while the door opened, letting in an icy blast and a little
woman in a plaid shawl. Her head was bare, her light brown hair being
pulled back from the forehead in the French way. She had large diamond
earrings, a pair of cold blue eyes capable of much surface mirth, and a
shrewd calculating face. It was Madame. She sat down at once and began
to talk, and talked on, cleverly, commandingly, till we left--cynical
as her husband, but more alert. Her readiness was amazing. She took
every point and added to it points of her own; while with every new
customer that entered for a glass of coffee or cognac or an _apéritif_
she had a sentence or two of greeting and jest, flung across to their
tables--for in this land of France, where people talk little of the
conduct of life, but live it industriously, every man who wants
refreshment may have a seat for his comfort and a table on which to
stand his glass, and may sit there as long as he wishes.
How far (I thought as I sat there, while the landlord and the landlady
and my friend exchanged their badinage) is this removed from the
“Red Lions” and “King’s Heads” and “White Horses” of my native land,
where landlords are plethoric and vinous, and landladies testy and
not too clean, and barmaids vacuous and pert, and bars are crowded by
horse-laughing loafers who know not when to stop! How different! And to
what class of society in England would one have to go (I asked myself)
for a similarly vivid banter and shrewd criticism of life? Certainly
not to licensed victuallers, was the nearest reply I could frame.