Read Online True Pleasures by Lucinda Holdforth - Free Book Online
Authors: Lucinda Holdforth
Tags: TRV009050
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approaches. He inclines his sleek head gravely. âAn apéritif, Mesdames?â
We hesitate. âWell, we would like a glass of champagne to start and, what do you think? We were thinking of drinking champagne right throughout our meal.â An approving nod, a smile.
â
Certainement
, Mesdames,â he responds. âPerfectly proper, and may I suggest the Deutz.â
He recommends the daily
menu fixe
; we accept. He pours our first champagne; we sip. He brings us the first of a sequence of delicious dishes; we tuck in. We are enjoying the rare pleasure of passivity, for we are in the hands of experts.
One dish I will always remember. I think it may be a work of art, or philosophy. Three mouthfuls are carefully dispersed on Limoges china: a tomato sorbet, a tomato mousse and a tomato terrine. Three colors, and, on the tasting, three textures. Each mouthful reveals a slightly different aspect of the fruit â hereâs the sweetness, then the slight zing and finally, the warm basenote. Itâs a discourse on tomatoness, both subtle and exquisite. And swiftly gone.
Every now and then passersby, on their stroll around the arcades of the Palais Royal, stop and peer through the lace-covered windows. They want to see this famous room, and I can understand why: Iâve done it myself. Nowthat Iâm inside, of course, Iâm trying not to look at them looking in at me.
In the heady summer of 1795, many more visitors wandered the Palais Royal looking for entertainments both pure and impure. Paris was in the grip of an extended, dissolute, after-the-Terror party. The excesses of the guillotine were over. The fanatic Robespierre was dead. People no longer needed to look fearfully over their shoulders. Instead they overcame the horror of recent deaths by an exuberant embrace of life. Women danced with narrow red ribbons around their necks to symbolize the severed head.
Amid this excess, the Palais Royal was the headquarters of pleasure. All the cafés, restaurants, theaters, brothels and gambling houses were filled to bursting. But there was a lonely figure among the revelers. He was an obscure young soldier named Napoleon Buonaparte, newly arrived in Paris from the provinces. At twenty-six years of age, he was pale, intense and silent, but even then he was an acknowledged genius on the battlefield. Born in Corsica, Napoleon was essentially Italian; he was as tough, clannish and ruthless as a mafia godson.
This macho soldier, obsessed with the acquisition and exercise of power, was understandably surprised when he figured out the real sources of power in Directory Paris. He wrote home to his brother Joseph:
Women are everywhere â applauding the plays, reading in the bookshops, walking in the Park. The lovely creatures even penetrate to the professorâs study. Paris is the only place in the world where they deserve to steer the ship of state; the men are mad about them, think of nothing else, only live by them and for them. Give a woman six months in Paris, and she knows where her empire is, and what is her due
.
When Napoleon met Rose de Beauharnais he confronted the apogee of this new woman: she was graceful, untruthful, influential, extravagant and amoral. She was as unlike his thrifty, virtuous, domineering mother as it was possible to be. But her very faults made her
une vraie femme
, the very essence of femininity, her charms as delicate as gossamer.
From their first night together Napoleon was utterly infatuated with the elegant, alluring older woman, whom he possessively renamed Josephine:
I awake all filled with you. Your image, and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart! ⦠a thousand kisses, mio dolce amor; but give me none back, for they set my blood on fire
.
As I gaze around this restaurant, it seems to me that feminine style still holds a special place in Paris. On the
We hesitate. âWell, we would like a glass of champagne to start and, what do you think? We were thinking of drinking champagne right throughout our meal.â An approving nod, a smile.
â
Certainement
, Mesdames,â he responds. âPerfectly proper, and may I suggest the Deutz.â
He recommends the daily
menu fixe
; we accept. He pours our first champagne; we sip. He brings us the first of a sequence of delicious dishes; we tuck in. We are enjoying the rare pleasure of passivity, for we are in the hands of experts.
One dish I will always remember. I think it may be a work of art, or philosophy. Three mouthfuls are carefully dispersed on Limoges china: a tomato sorbet, a tomato mousse and a tomato terrine. Three colors, and, on the tasting, three textures. Each mouthful reveals a slightly different aspect of the fruit â hereâs the sweetness, then the slight zing and finally, the warm basenote. Itâs a discourse on tomatoness, both subtle and exquisite. And swiftly gone.
Every now and then passersby, on their stroll around the arcades of the Palais Royal, stop and peer through the lace-covered windows. They want to see this famous room, and I can understand why: Iâve done it myself. Nowthat Iâm inside, of course, Iâm trying not to look at them looking in at me.
In the heady summer of 1795, many more visitors wandered the Palais Royal looking for entertainments both pure and impure. Paris was in the grip of an extended, dissolute, after-the-Terror party. The excesses of the guillotine were over. The fanatic Robespierre was dead. People no longer needed to look fearfully over their shoulders. Instead they overcame the horror of recent deaths by an exuberant embrace of life. Women danced with narrow red ribbons around their necks to symbolize the severed head.
Amid this excess, the Palais Royal was the headquarters of pleasure. All the cafés, restaurants, theaters, brothels and gambling houses were filled to bursting. But there was a lonely figure among the revelers. He was an obscure young soldier named Napoleon Buonaparte, newly arrived in Paris from the provinces. At twenty-six years of age, he was pale, intense and silent, but even then he was an acknowledged genius on the battlefield. Born in Corsica, Napoleon was essentially Italian; he was as tough, clannish and ruthless as a mafia godson.
This macho soldier, obsessed with the acquisition and exercise of power, was understandably surprised when he figured out the real sources of power in Directory Paris. He wrote home to his brother Joseph:
Women are everywhere â applauding the plays, reading in the bookshops, walking in the Park. The lovely creatures even penetrate to the professorâs study. Paris is the only place in the world where they deserve to steer the ship of state; the men are mad about them, think of nothing else, only live by them and for them. Give a woman six months in Paris, and she knows where her empire is, and what is her due
.
When Napoleon met Rose de Beauharnais he confronted the apogee of this new woman: she was graceful, untruthful, influential, extravagant and amoral. She was as unlike his thrifty, virtuous, domineering mother as it was possible to be. But her very faults made her
une vraie femme
, the very essence of femininity, her charms as delicate as gossamer.
From their first night together Napoleon was utterly infatuated with the elegant, alluring older woman, whom he possessively renamed Josephine:
I awake all filled with you. Your image, and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart! ⦠a thousand kisses, mio dolce amor; but give me none back, for they set my blood on fire
.
As I gaze around this restaurant, it seems to me that feminine style still holds a special place in Paris. On the
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