Paris In The Spring

Well, it was really only mid-March, twenty five years ago, and my husband--then a very, very new friend--and I were ensconced in the Hotel St. Germaine, on the Rue de Bac.  Breakfast time, and there was a knock at our hotel room door, which I jumping out of bed, rushed to open.  There stood a stout lady in uniform bearing our breakfast tray who, as she entered, trumpeted, "Bonjour, Madame et Monsieur", then looking more closely at the other figure in the bed, drew a breath and came out with "Bonjour, Messieurs."  The next morning, the knock again, I opened, and she was in the middle of "Bonjour, Madame et Mo---" stopped, and managed her "Messieurs."  The third morning, as I opened the door she smiled triumphantly as she proudly proclaimed, "Bonjour Messieurs." Later on one of those days we were in a very elegant patisserie; my husband always laughs and says he will never forget the shock that ran through the assembled ladies, staff and customers, everyone dressed with the elegant and compulsory neck scarf, when as the woman who waited on us began to wrap up a scone which I had bought to munch on I called out in my impeccable French.  "Ça n'est pas necessaire, Madame.  Je l'achetée pour manger dans la rue."  In those days eating on the street was an unpardonable vulgarism, certainly never encountered the Rue de Rivoli.  The ladies drew back fascinated to be in the presence of a monster so naive that he did not even scruple to admit this horrid truth.  Mais, il est americain. vous savez, pour cette chose rien n'est impossible."  As I recounted in the memoir, at one point we sat on a bench by the Seine and gazed into each other's eyes and kissed.  The crowd aboard a passing one of those Batteaux Mouches applauded.  We are remembering out trip this week having congratulated ourselves at surviving twenty five years.  At a party last week amid a crowd of heterosexual couples, none of them  could claim such connubial longevity.  Extraordinaire!