I leave the room to go outside into the freezing darkness. I feel as deprived as the milkmaid in Lafontaine’s famous fable with her overturned milk can. I can’t help shouting, with tears now flowing: “Farewell soup! Bread, Cake! Cheese! Wine!” and then I start laughing like an i***t. Madame, who has followed me out after putting on an immense woolen shawl over her shoulders looks at me perplexed. I re-assure her: “Don’t worry, Madame Raboullet, it’s the reaction!”
“Oy, oy (an Auvergnat way of saying Oh!), don’t blame him too hard, it’s the war, you see. He’s not himself since the war…Oy, oy, what a wretched business!”
Like two little girls who have just been spanked, we walk, resigned, towards the cowshed. Fortunately for both of us it isn’t far and we arrive at an impressively huge doub
