In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust Page A

indeed hoped to catch sight of him as he arrived, but knowing that Mamma hated people lurking behind doors and at windows, and thinking that she would get to know from the other servants or from the porter that she had been keeping watch (for Françoise saw everywhere nothing but “jealousies” and “tale-bearings,” which played the same baleful and perennial role in her imagination as, for certain other people, the intrigues of the Jesuits or the Jews), she had contented herself with a peep from the kitchen window, “so as not to have words with Madame,” and from her momentary glimpses of M. de Norpois had “thought it was Monsieur Legrandin,” because of what she called his “agelity” and in spite of their having not a single point in common.
    “Well then,” inquired my mother, “and how do you explain that nobody else can make an aspic as well as you—when you choose?” “I really couldn’t say how that becomes about,” replied Françoise, who had established no very clear line of demarcation between the verb “to come,” in certain of its meanings, and the verb “to become.” She was speaking the truth, moreover, if only in part, being scarcely more capable—or desirous—of revealing the mystery which ensured the superiority of her aspics or her creams than a well-dressed woman the secrets of her toilettes or a great singer those of her voice. Their explanations tell us little; it was the same with the recipes of our cook. “They do it in too much of a hurry,” she went on, alluding to the great restaurants, “and then it’s not all done together. You want the beef to become like a sponge, then it will drink up all the juice to the last drop. Still, there was one of those cafés where I thought they did know a little bit about cooking. I don’t say it was altogether my aspic, but it was very nicely done, and the soufflés had plenty of cream.”
    “Do you mean Henry’s?” asked my father (who had now joined us), for he greatly enjoyed that restaurant in the Place Gaillon where he went regularly to regimental dinners. “Oh, dear no!” said Françoise with a mildness which cloaked a profound contempt. “I meant a little restaurant. At that Henry’s it’s all very good, sure enough, but it’s not a restaurant, it’s more like a—soup-kitchen.” “Weber’s, then?” “Oh, no, Monsieur, I meant a good restaurant. Weber’s, that’s in the Rue Royale; that’s not a restaurant, it’s a brasserie. I don’t know that the food they give you there is even served. I think they don’t even have any table-cloths; they just shove it down in front of you like that, with a take it or leave it.” “Ciro’s?” Françoise smiled. “Oh! there I should say the main dishes are ladies of the world.” (
Monde
meant for Françoise the
demi
-
monde
.) “Lord! they need them to fetch the boys in.”
    We could see that, with all her air of simplicity, Françoise was for the celebrities of her profession a more ferocious “colleague” than the most jealous, the most self-infatuated of actresses. We felt, all the same, that she had a proper feeling for her art and a respect for tradition, for she added: “No, I mean a restaurant where it looked like they kept a very good little family table. It’s a place of some consequence, too. Plenty of custom there. Oh, they raked in the coppers, there, all right.” (Françoise, being thrifty, reckoned in coppers, where your plunger would reckon in gold.) “Madame knows the place well enough, down there to the right along the main boulevards, a little way back.” The restaurant of which she spoke with this blend of pride and good-humoured tolerance was, it turned out, the Café Anglais.
    When New Year’s Day came, I first of all paid a round of family visits with Mamma who, so as not to tire me, had planned them beforehand (with the aid of an itinerary drawn up by my father) according to district rather than degree of kinship. But no sooner had we