The French Connection: Part III

My little story below is drawn from some 25,00 to 80,000 English words of French origin. 

I found a Website with a list, but with about 1,000 words per letter, couldn’t get past C in one sitting. (Hence, the preponderance of ABC words below, with a few others thrown in.) All italic words below are derived from French. Enjoy!

 

Last Autumn, some 30 years after commencement, my old college companions decided to rendezvous in New Orleans for a reunion. If you looked at our dossiers, you would find that one was an architect from Vermont, one an avant-garde artist from San Francisco, one an attorney from Chicago who was also a wine connoisseur, one an au pair from Des Moines, one an agile accomplished acrobat from Delaware and the last a bourgeois aristocrat from Baton Rouge, who had his chauffeur drive him in his limousine to the café  where we met for croissants, crepes and beignets. 

Besides the professional accomplishmentsof my acquaintances, it was both amusing and amazing to note how different we had become from when we knew each other as older adolescents. One was a celibate bachelor who abstained from sex and liquor, another an ambitious entrepreneur with a big appetite for the finer things in life, one an amateur author who had taken up crocheting, one an adventurer who also had many adulterous affairs. Another was a chauvinist who provoked many arguments praising the conservative government and predicting the downfall of civilization from subversive pacifist  liberals, spouting clichés he had learned from Fox News. 

 

“Don’t be absurd!” some admonished him. “Au contraire to what Fox News tells you, those people are illiterate charlatans. Stop being a bigoted baboon, a seditious scoundrel and a clueless capitalist!”  Another advised that we not sabotage the comradery with such stupid skirmishes and that helped appease the situation. We admitted that we had made a faux-pas and agreed that talking politics was poisonous and we should abstain. Or otherwise, hire a chaperone.

 

After the café we sauntered down the boulevard, encountered a detour and maneuvered around some debris and made our way to a fancy restaurant at the end of a cul-de-sac. There we were treated to a sumptuous banquet: beef tartare, quiche lorraine, coq au vin, vichyssoise, ratatouille, soufflé, jambalaya. The artist and the acrobat, not part of the nouveau riche, preferred to order a la carte. With the champagne and bourbon and a carafe of Cabernet flowing, things loosened up. When dessert came— creme brûlée, madeleine, chocolate éclair and chocolate mousse, the entourage exclaimed. "O la la! What a cuisine!"  

After dinner, we considered going to a séance or play billiards or go to a film noir festival or gamble playing roulette, but instead decided to go to a chic jazz club because the restaurant had offered us some coupons for a cheaper price and there was only a short queue to get in.  We were particularly enchanted by one chanteuse who just had a certain je ne sais quoi. She knew our acrobat friend and at her supplication, they performed a Vaudeville routine together that ended in a spectacular somersault. It was the piece de resistance of the evening. 

 

We all agreed we should meet again and Voila! everyone took out their phones to check their calendars. But by the end, we couldn’t agree on a date. Oh well.  Ce la vie!