was reputed to be the best chef in all the low country. Moreover, the provender being served that evening was the product of last week’s hunting through the snowy woods where the trees cracked like ice floes and where the animals—caught straight out of their dens, no time even to blink an eye—had the succulent flesh of creatures who hadn’t registered their demise. To you who are familiar with human food, I will describe the menu and the adversity this implied for Petrus: in addition to the soup with bacon which was the farm’s everyday fare, he was made to suffer duck roasted on the spit, jugged hare, pheasant pâté, the leftovers of a doe terrine, braised endives, potatoes roasted in the fireplace, and a frying pan full of caramelized cardoons. Finally, after the half a cheese (from our own cows, if you please) per guest, they dished up a plum pie with an autumn crabapple compote, accompanied by a sauce that was both sweet and sour, known to refine the palate of any gourmet.
For now, Petrus was gazing at the soup where, among the carrots, potatoes, and leeks, there floated pinkish, off-white bits, and he questioned his neighbor about them.
“Pig, by Jove, pig!” answered the neighbor.
Pig! I can’t eat pig! thought Petrus, horrified, picturing the Guard of the Pavilion crammed into a stewpot. But the pinkish morsels seemed to be winking at him, and the aroma was beguiling him like a succubus. After his third glass of wine, he mustered his courage and bit cautiously into the meat. He was met with an explosion of pleasure that dissolved any vestiges of the guilt that had already been diluted by the wines of the arrière-côte. While the fibers of bacon disintegrated on his tongue, he let the juice slip toward his throat and thought he might swoon with pleasure. What followed was even greater ecstasy, and after the sensual delight of the duck on the spit, he had no more scruples about wallowing in carnivorous debauchery. I’ll do penance later, he thought, attacking the terrine and its fat and chunks, which either melted in his mouth or resisted his bite in a demonic ballet. It will come as no surprise to learn that the next morning he could not recall having had thoughts so foreign to his culture and his nature, not to mention the fact that he resolved his moral conflict by convincing himself that a stranger must adapt to the customs of the countries he visits, and by deluding himself that the animals had been killed without feeling pain—which forces us to acknowledge the fact that Petrus was behaving in a perfectly human manner. I will leave it to others to judge whether one should be glad of this. After dinner, everyone behaved like humans and natives of France, particularly Burgundians: the men enjoyed their little nightcap, the women tidied up the kitchen, drinking herbal tea, and they honored the dinner with fine compliments. Maurice decreed that Marguerite’s pheasant pâté was the most tender in the civilized world, which caused much debate regarding a related existential problem of major importance (the consubstantial dryness of pheasant pâté) then, without batting an eyelash, he asked the chef to share her secret—to which she replied by saying she would rather be crucified alive and left to the crows of the six cantons than divulge the secret to her knack for pâté.
And while Petrus may have enjoyed the evening’s fare, the wine had been an experience of another order. A first sip, and it was the land of Burgundy in his mouth, its winds and mist, its stones and vine stock; the more he drank, the deeper he penetrated the secrets of the universe in a way which the contemplation of the peaks in his Woods had never allowed; and while his elfin soul understood a hundredfold this magic born of the alliance between earth and sky, what was human in his heart could be expressed at last. In the dual story for which the winemaker and the drinker were responsible the most marvelous thing, beyond the enlightenment of intoxication, could be found; the vine told a slow adventure, vegetal and cosmic, an epic of low walls and hillsides in the sun; then the wine loosened tongues and gave birth in turn to stories which the prophecy had only foreshadowed. There was talk of miraculous hunting and virgins in the snow, of holy processions, of sacred violets, and fabulous creatures whose wanderings