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of a kitchen. The kitchen was an immense open space equipped with time-scarred white wooden tables, heavy cast iron pots and pans, and a somber black iron stove that filled one side of the room. This was the nerve center of operations.

The 'pice de rsistance' of the meal was to be a cake, un quatre-quarts. It had just four ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. Despite its simplicity it was to be so delicate that it had to be made by a specialist in a neighboring village. Williams and I were the ceremonial party that collected the quatre-quarts barely half an hour before the meal. I sat crunched in the front seat of Williams' deux-chevaux with the cake poised upon my knees. It was at least half a meter in diameter, about an inch and a half thick, resting on a circle of flexible cardboard. As the small car bucked and rolled it's way back to Moncontour I could see the cake bend and twist - a crack or a tear and I could not have survived another Tante Yvonne tongue-lashing.

The dinner started at about five o'clock in the evening with the arrival of the Priest and his housekeeper followed by the Mayor and his wife. There were one or two other guests. There were eleven of us. The children were expelled several floors above us and we settled to the entertainment of the evening.

In front of each place there was a setting of four or five large dinner plates, one on top of each other, surrounded by shining clean cutlery etched by the use of years, and an array of sparkling glasses - that boded well. The plates were used; one per course, and then each was cleared away to reveal a new one for the next course.

First a prayer from the Priest, then soup (it was a gazpacho for the summer), cold meat - smoked and plain, a gentle white fish, and roast beef, vegetables, and fruit as the evening lengthened. Finally, the quatre-quart was served. It melted in the mouth and I was complimented on having managed to keep it intact - so much so that I felt I had produced the masterpiece. The right wine accompanied each course and each had been matched by the right conversation. Since most of those present met at the dinner table regularly, prior subjects for conversation were retrieved and arguments and agreements were extended. When the Mayor's turn came to host the dinner, the discussions could be continued again. Now, late in the evening, each of us replete with food and wine, often times the discussions dwindled into quiet - next time, perhaps, I'll make that point -

The meal and the quatre-quart had been a success, and I was restored to the bosom of Tante Yvonne's family. It was a memorable occasion.

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