Much later, when the skies turned dark from both the evening light and the puffed up rain clouds, I go over to the place where Madame was holding a table for me. I’d been there just two weeks ago, but today the menu offered a three week special: a love affair with the lobster. Irresistible.

Next to me, two women were doing a perfect rendition of multi-tasking: savoring the food, the wine, speaking in animated tones and puffing away at their cigarettes. I do not want to exalt smoking of course, but I so completely associate restaurants with smoking in France that I will feel a layer of sensations will be erased the day the last stub is crushed into an ash tray and France becomes smoke free.