"Now Sara and I are cocooned in for a long wait, starting the wait with the D'Artagnan duck, D'Artagnan cassoulet, and cheeses flown in from fromages.com. Our Marie Antoinette moment :)"My French intellectual does not even bother to correct me:
Well, Marie-Antoinette died in October 1793. She was guillotined on Place de la Concorde. D'Artagnan, from the four Muskateers, was a character of 3 novels written by Alexandre Dumas in the mid-19th century based on a real person, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan (c. 1611–1673), who was supposed to live under the reign of the French King Louis XIII and his Prime Minister Richelieu between 1631 (when he reached the age of 20) and 1643 (when Louis XII died). Louis XIII married Anne from Austria in 1615, a Queen mentioned in the story of d'Artagnan, with a jewel plot.
Just to let you know that a jump of more than 150 years in time is quite a stretch. But in your situation, in Chicago, I supposed that the product from this d'Artagnan company must look like an amazing luxury!
However, I can find fresh duck at a butcher selling only duck, including foie gras. I would never dare even mention the name of this company considered as the most shameful thing ever produced in the Southwest of France, so low is the quality of their products. People would have banned me from the entire covered market I loved to go shopping to, for the rest of my life.
Me:
I stand humbly corrected by 150 years :) OK, OK, I know that Marie Antoinette never said what she said. This is a tale told only in the Anglo-Saxon world. But I do have a question. In colloquial English "Marie Antoinette moment" refers to her reputedly having responded to news of people rioting because they had no bread by "Let them eat cakes"
My French intellectual:But I always wondered... She never said that, did she? Sounds like post-guillotine Republican propaganda, no?
OK for Marie-Antoinette in the English version. But the quote "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (let them eat brioche) is due to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his book "Confessions" published in 1782 (7 years before the beginning of the Revolution). However, he does not name the "princess" in his text. His text was only intending to illustrate the insensitivity of the aristocrats towards the people. But he probably invented the story, because no trace of it could be found in the contemporary documents. The only reference can be found in the "Mémoires" of a certain Mademoiselle de Boigne, published only in 1903. In those, the quote is attributed to Madame Victoire, instead, a daughter of the King Louis XIV who was actually a bit dumb but very generous. She intended to help and not to mock the poor. She proposed the crust used in the pâté which was not eaten by the high society,. This crust was used only to protect the meat inside during cooking. In her memoir Miss De Boigne writes
“Madame Victoire had very little wit and extreme kindness. She was the one who said, tears in her eyes, in a time of scarcity when we spoke of the sufferings of the unfortunate people lacking bread: "But my God, if they could resign themselves to eating pâté crust!"
The quote was attributed to Marie Antoinette later, and I have no document showing when. Only the symbol was kept. I never heard this quote in France. I heard it only while in the US. Another myth about France, I thought. But there is a Wikipedia page, in French, about this quote. So some French scholars are aware of it.
