What's wrong?

SO MANY YEARS AGO that I shrink from precise recollection, I saw a black-and-white film called The Seven Deadly Sins. The dialogue was French, with terse subtitles in English; there was no plot in the ordinary sense, but the "theme" was to illustrate each mortal sin by a robust example drawn from everyday life. ("Mortal", in this context, means "endangering the life of the soul".)

The "tone" of the film was worldly--a sort of tolerant cynicism which suggested Guy de Maupassant himself. Please remember, and make suitable excuse, that at least thirty years have passed, so I shan't be too surprised if some true film buff writes in to say it was based on de Maupassant, or to offer some other correction. But I don't think my memory would be far wrong in the clear picture it retains of my favourite of the seven little vignettes offered. It went like this.

A young traveller loses his way in the French countryside, and stumbles in the dusk into a rough farmhouse. The surly peasant has just stabled his draughthorse, and his wife is about to serve the evening meal. It is she who answers the traveller's agitated knock. In the gruffest and most grudging way, the peasant says (in effect, and in French): "Oh, all right! Let the poor dope in. Give him a feed!"

After soupe, the wife slices off for her husband a portion of stupendous camembert cheese, and is about to carve another off for the traveller.

"Not too much! Not too much!" exclaims the husband.

"It's far too good for him!"

And indeed; judging by the guest's drooling, lip-smacking and eye-rolling, he finds this camembert something out of the world, beyond all his gustatory experience.