“Um-hmm,” Titi said absently and disappeared into the parlor.

“We can take the fudge out to make room!” I called after him. “I swear! It will be fine! Lasts forever, fudge!”

He peered back out at me, frowning. “I’m surprised at the way you, of all people, are trying to treat chocolate, Laura. I really am.”

I went to find my husband, the person who was supposed to negotiate with his family when their persistent Frenchness started to menace my health. “Sébastien,” I murmured in his ear. “Your uncle put the coleslaw in the parlor.”

“Um-hmm,” he said, making short work of his six-part tomatoes. He didn’t have any tomato seeds clinging to him, I noticed. Not even on his hands—he just held the tomato firmly with the tips of his fingers and sliced away, neat as could be.

“You know, I can get more bales if you need them,” the peasant said. I was starting to see why pre-guillotine aristocrats liked to be able to just shoo peasants away with a flick of the hand.

“It’s got mayonnaise in it.”

Sébastien cut his eyes to me. “You’re not going to start going on about that salmonella thing, are you?”

“It’s a genuine illness!”

“Not in France, it isn’t.”

“I know three people who caught salmonella in France.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know any French people who caught salmonella in France? Or were these all Americans?”

“No!” I said, stung. “Only one of them. The others were, um, Canadians.”

“You know, maybe you guys should quit washing your hands after going to the bathroom. Might toughen you up a bit.”

He dumped the tomatoes into a bowl and went into the dining room to pick up a butcher knife and start hacking up meat for the kebabs. Standing as he was before that enormous fireplace, it made for a primordial scene. And I was pleased to see that even he got his hands a little squishy when cutting up huge masses of meat.

Mamie carried something through the room to the parlor and stopped by her daughter on the way back to the kitchen. “Do you really think you should put the pepper next to the chicken on the kebabs, Claudine? I would put the onion first.”

I fled to the kitchen in search of tuna for a salade niçoise and discovered Titi covering with aluminum foil a pan full of dozens of chicken thighs he had finished cooking earlier. “Maybe we should pack them into something smaller,” I said. “I don’t see how we’ll fit that into any of the refrigerators.”

“Laura,” he tsked. “They’re cooked. Why put them into the refrigerator? They’ll be fine.”

“But . . .”

“I wouldn’t leave them out forever, but they’ll be fine for twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe I should leave this salade niçoise for the last minute,” I said, gazing at the can of tuna.