‘Wonderful! I’m just sitting down to an excellent trout. Come and join me.’

Five minutes later I was seated opposite him and tucking in to lunch.

‘So you never married?’ I asked.

‘Good heavens no!’

‘And you like it here?’

‘Oh yes! Always busy, always something to do. Patients, friends. I eat well. I’m in good health. Lots of good laughs. Good hunting. What more could a man desire? Not much, in my view!’

‘And you don’t get bored living in such a small place?’

‘Not for a minute. Plenty going on always. Small town’s just like a large one, I’d say. There’s less variety in the way of entertainments but then each one becomes more exciting as a result. You know fewer people but you see them oftener. When you know every window in a small place, each individual one is more interesting than a whole streetful in Paris. You can have a very nice time, a very, very nice time indeed in a small town, you know. I mean, take this one for example, Gisors, I know its history backwards, from the earliest times to the present day. And I tell you it’s absolutely fascinating.’

‘Are you from Gisors yourself?’

‘Not Gisors, no. I’m from Gournay. That’s its sister town, and its rival. Gournay is to Gisors what Lucullus was to Cicero.3 In Gournay, the big thing is food. People refer to the inhabitants as the “Gournay Guzzlers”. Gisors looks down its nose at Gournay. But of course the people of Gournay laugh at Gisors. It’s absolutely hilarious!’

I realized that what I was eating was truly exquisite: soft-boiled eggs enveloped in a slightly chilled, herb-flavoured meat jelly. Smacking my lips appreciatively I said, ‘This really is very good indeed.’

My host smiled.

‘Two things you’ve got to have: proper meat jelly – not so easy to find as you might think – and decent eggs. Decent eggs are few and far between, you know. You want one with a slightly reddish yolk, nice and tasty. I’ve got two separate hen houses as a matter of fact. One for laying hens. One for chickens for the table. I give my layers a special feed. I’m very particular. With eggs, just as with chicken meat and of course with beef and lamb, with milk, with everything in fact, you’ve got to be able to taste the sap, the quintessence of what the animal itself has been feeding on. We’d have much better food if we just bore that in mind a bit more.’

I laughed. ‘Keen on food then, are you?’