Marquss de Boildier: Tout et magnifique Monsieur Viscount! Everything was delicious but the ratatouille was simply merveilleuse, I was licking the plate.
Baroness: Merci beaucoup, our chef will be positively joyeaux.
Marquess: Your chef must be Provencal.
Baron: He is. He’s been with Madame since when she was in Provence.
Marquess: Ah Provence Madame, you must be a Milhaud!
Baroness: Mais oui. Our family has been in Provence since the fifteenth century.
Marquess: Is there any way to persuade you to part with that chef fantastique?
Robert: I doubt it. He recently re-trained at Le Cordon Blue but he’s been making Mama his ratatouille since before 1848.
Marquess: Ah Madame, you’re so lucky you were in Provence for that year. Those sauvages, what did they want? What did they accomplish?
Bernard: They wanted the rights of man promised them in le code Napoleon!
Robert: Pas ce soir Bernard!
Bernard: Well so long as we’re speaking of le politique, it’s important to get things right.
Baroness: You’ll have to excuse our son, Bernard, he’s quite le progressiste!
Robert: If he could he’d chop his own head off.
Marquess: C’est bon, it’s the missteps of the young.
Bernard: Peut-etre Madame, it’s not the young who’ve misstepped.
Robert: Ferme ta bouche Bernard!
Marquis: Mama. You actually would like Bernard very much. He graduated La Sorbonne first in his class and is becoming a doctor.
Bernard: Oui Madame, ministering the poor in the quartier Latin has been an eye-opening experience.
Marquess: Ah. Well I have nothing but le plus grand respect for the students of La Sorbonne, particularly the Jewish students. All those jeunes nobles who go to the Sorbonne but don’t work at all, you should meet me cousin Marcel, such a brilliant boy who never works, now he’s nothing but a flanner.
Bernard: And Madame Marquess, I have nothing but le plus grand respect for your great-grandfather Comte de Mirabeau. He had everything to lose in 1789, yet he sided with the third estate and the paysans. If he had lived, la Revolution might have been une grande success.
Marquess: Well Chere Monsieur, we are very proud of le Comte Mirabeau even if we may disagree with certain things he did.
Bernard: I disagree with certain things he did too but I agree he was nevertheless a great man.
Baron: Enough of le politique. Pierre!
Pierre: Oui Seigneur Bloch!?
Baron: Bring us the Armagnac!
Baroness: Madame Marquess you must try this Armagnac, Michel’s (the Baron) been saving this bottle from 1884.
Marquess: Quelle vintage!
(Pierre pours the Armagnac)
Baron: And s’il te plait Jacques, refill everyone’s champagne.
Jacques: Oui Seigneur Bloch!
Baroness: Jean send for dessert!
Jean: Oui Seigneuresse Bloch.
(Baron de Bloch taps his glass)
Baron: A toast, to my daughter Rachel and my soon to be son in law. Vraiment c’est miracle! If a d’Boildier can marry a Bloch and nobody bats an eye. (to son-in-law) Nobody’s batting an eye are they Guillaume?
Marquis d’Boildier: Well, a couple hundred de Boildiers are cursing me from the grave but my mother’s just relieved I’m getting married. (general laughter)
Marquess d’Boildier (his mother): Et mon fils should have married Rebecca seven years ago! (more laughter)
Baron: Well if a de Boildier can marry a Bloch and nobody bats an eye, then we truly are at the eve of a century of universal peace and happiness.
Bernard: Really petit pere, you know better than that.
Baroness: Pas mantenaint Bernard!
Bernard: Look around Paris!
Robert: Bernard, it’s a fiching toast!
Baroness: Robert! Ton longue!
Baron: Nononon. We’re clearly need to address this. It’s true, when my father was a jeune, we had a revolution every twenty years. My grand grand oncle, Meyer Bloch, lost his head in la terreur in spite of having left his Yeshiva in Rouen to join la revolution. Imagine, a Jewish communist... Rest assured Madame la Marquess, the Bloch family learned very quickly the terrible cost of revolution et la modification. And by the time Robert becomes Viscount de Bloch, Bernard will understand it too.
Bernard: You don’t understand the price of la meme chose!
Baron: Meyer’s brother, Solomon Bloch, my great-grandfather, fought with Napoleon on the Italian campaigns. He became an officer in the War of the Second Coalition, was wounded at Austerlitz, commanded a division at Friedland, and an entire battalion at Wagram.
Marquis: Sante!
Baron: D’Accord! He was a gloire de la France. When he came to Paris apres la guerre, he established the firm of Solomon Bloch which manufactured armaments for the greatest military in the world!
Everyone: Salut!
Baron: The firm of Solomon Bloch soon became Bloch & Son, and when my grandfather Edmund Bloch became old enough, my grandpere used Bloch & Son to create the fourth-largest bank in France.
Everyone except Bernard: Salut! (Bernard grunts)
Baron: And then my father, Victor Bloch diversified the firm of Bloch & Son into coal mining, textiles, and railroads. Mon pere’s help was crucial in enabling Napoleon III to become Emperor apres l’1848 revolution, and in return, he was created Viscount de Bloch by the Emperor, that great man entirely worthy of his grandfather.
(everyone laughs)
Baroness: Really Michel, not even you can say without laughing.
Baron: And my forefathers have so blessed us, and now look at our family, look at our nation, look at our world.
Bernard: Yes, look at it…
Baron: 1899…. None of the revolutions since Napoleon erupted into war of the world et l’age de revolution is over. The third republique is finally a government like the English. We will now have eras of prosperity, peace, and civilisation. Sans war, sans terror, sans death.
Marquess: Sante! Liberte, egalite, stabilite.
Bernard: And yet you’re all using your titles as though ‘71 never happened...
Baroness: Bernard pourquoi? You’re ruining dinner?
Bernard: Everything that brought les revolutions are still here. Poverty, violence, le fracture culturelle.
Robert: Don’t do it Bernard.
Bernard: Look at the divide in the soul Francaise!
Robert: Don’t say it Bernard.
Bernard: La France must wake up! Look at l’affaire Dreyfus!
(everybody groans)
Bernard: Alfred was always as stupid as a suitcase without a handle, but look at how much people hate him.
Baron: Voyens Bernard, the hatred people have for us is un grande exaggeration.
Bernard: It’s not.
Baron: Pierre! Do you hate us?
Pierre: Certainement non Seigneur Bloch!
Baron: You served Alfred Dreyfus often enough, did you hate him?
Pierre: He did not speak to me enough to make any impression at all.
Baron: How do you feel about l’Affair Dreyfus?
Pierre: I don’t know enough about it to make any comment.
Baron: You see?
Marquess: Beware Monsieur le Viscount, servants are much too careful to make their true feelings known.
Pierre: Madame la Marquess I absolument do not have any feelings on l’Affair Dreyfus.
Baron: For thirty years, Pierre has been the perfect butler. He came to us from la guarde nationale right before le commune. Outside was anarchy, but inside maison Bloch was pure order. Every meal on time, every dessert precisely as requested, every bed made. The perfect butler for la maison parfait.
Pierre: Merci Seigneur.
Marquess: Well, what about Rebecca, wasn’t she briefly engaged to Monsieur Dreyfus’s brother?
Marquis: MAMAN!
Marquess: It does no good to pretend your fiance doesn’t know very well the most famous man in France.
Marquis: She does not wish to speak of it!
Marquess: Have you even asked her?
Marquis: Why would I?
Marquess: Well, I wouldn’t have to ask if you hadn’t called your engagement off seven years ago!
Marquis: Rachel you don’t have to answer anything Maman asks of this.
Rachel: I don’t mind.
Marquess: What is the Dreyfus family like?
Rachel: (shrugs) Like us. They love France, they wish France loved them.
Marquess: (pause) They do ma fille. Everyone who matters loves you.
Everyone: Salut!
Marquess: Plus de champaigne Jean!
Baron: Pierre bring in Monsieur Waldteufel.
Jean: Oui Madame la marquess.
Marquess: Sante! A mon Guillaume and Rebecca! Le plus magnifique couple de France.
Everyone: Sante!
Baron: Rebecca, it’s time. Don’t worry. Monsieur Waldteufel is here to help you.
Rachel (nervously): Baruch ata Adonai eloheiiiinu…
Waldteufel: Eloheinu
Rachel: melech, haolam, sheh…
Waldteufel: Shehecheyanu.
Rachel: Shehecheyanu. V’Ki….
Waldteufel: V’Kiyemanu
Rachel: V’Kiyemanu.
Waldteufel: Ve’higiyanu.
Rachel: Ve’higiyanu… La’Zman Hazeh!
(everybody claps… Brava! Excellent!).
Pierre: You may come with us downstairs to eat now Monsieur Waldteufel.
(they go downstairs)
Pierre: (under his breath) Jewish merde....
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