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Still, being no better than he was, I was coward enough to hold my peace. This was the situation when we set out for Nancy, our big car running slowly, in order not to outpace the rickety Red Cross cab. We were not allowed by the military authorities to enter Toul, so our way took us through delightful old Commercy, birthplace of Madeleines.
This architecture was the first flowering of the Gothic race; they had no Homers; the flame found vent not by imaged words and vitalized alphabets; they vitalized stone, and their poets were minster builders; their epics, cathedrals. This is why one cathedral like Strasbourg, or Notre Dame has a thousand fold the power of any number of Madeleines.
Further on at Commercy, you are enticed to regale upon unrivalled cakes called "Madeleines de Commercy," and not a town, I believe, of this favoured district is without its speciality in the shape of delicate cates or drinks. Chalons-sur-Marne, moreover, possesses one of the very best hotels in provincial France the hotel with the queer name another inducement for us to idle on the way.
The glass jars full of dry biscuits, macaroons, and madeleines also made her mouth water; and the bright shop with its big mirrors, its marble slabs, its gilding, its bread-bins of ornamental ironwork, and its second window in which long glistening loaves were displayed slantwise, with one end resting on a crystal shelf whilst above they were upheld by a brass rod, was so warm and odoriferous of baked dough that her features expanded with pleasure when, yielding to temptation, she went in to buy a brioche for two sous.
The feather-light, shell-shaped cakes were the success of the feast; and when Duke Stanislas heard their history, he insisted that they should be named Madeleines "after their mother." Even in war days, "Madeleines de Commercy" is the first cry which greets the traveller entering town.
Another friend was the cake man, dressed all in white, with his basket of brioches and madeleines on his head then there were the inevitable Africans with fezes on their heads and bundles of silks crêpes-de-chine and ostrich feathers, that one sees at every plage. I don't think they did much business. The public was not all distinguished.
Jim, it seems, had a charming habit of sending to his mother at home a specimen of the cake, or confiture, or bonbon, for which each place he visited abroad was famed. These things used to reach her in jars or boxes adorned with the coat-of-arms and photographs of the city concerned a procession of surprises: and I think as she bought Madeleines of Commercy she moistened them with a few tears.
However, Notre Dame is a beautiful church; but I wish it was under as good care as Cologne Cathedral, and that instead of building Madeleines and Pantheons, France would restore and preserve her cathedrals those grand memorials of the past. I consider the King of Prussia as not only a national benefactor, but the benefactor of the world.
She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake.
As shortbread is the specialty of Edinburgh, as butterscotch is that of Doncaster, "maids-of-honour" that of Richmond, and strawberry jam that of Bar-le-Duc, so are "madeleines" the special cakes of Commercy. The town was full of officers and soldiers.
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