Marquss de Boildier: Tout et magnifique Monsieur le Baron! Everything was delicious but the baekoffe was simply merveilleuse, I was licking the plate.
Baroness Bloch: Merci beaucoup, the chef[ll be positivement joyeaux.
Marquess: Your chef must be Alsatian.
Baron Bloch: He is. He’s been with Madame since Alsace.
Marquess: Ah Alsace Madame, you must be a Javal!
Baroness: Mais oui. Our family has been in Alsace since the twelfth 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 his father was making baekoffe pour Maman before 1848.
Marquess: Ah Madame, you’re so lucky you were in Strasbourg that year. Those sauvages, what did they want? What did they accomplish?
Bernard: They wanted le droit de l'homme promis them by 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: Maman. You'd actually 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. J'ai 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. Me cousin Marcel never leaves his bed!
Bernard: And Madame la Marquess, I have nothing but le plus grand respect for your great-grandfather Comte de Mirabeau. Il a tout risque en 1789, yet he sided with le Tiers Etat et les paysans. Had he lived, la Revolution might have been une grande success.
Marquess: Chere Monsieur, we are very proud of le Comte Mirabeau even if we disagree with certain things he did.
Bernard: Je ne suis pas d'accord aussi but he was nevertheless a great man.
Baron: Enough of le politique. Pierre! l'Armagnac!
Baroness: Madame Marquess you must try this Armagnac, La bouteille is from 1880.
Marquess: Quelle vintage!
(Pierre pours the Armagnac)
Baron: Et 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: Une toast, a ma fille Rachel and her fiancee. Vraiment c’est miracle! If a d’Boildier can marry a Bloch and nobody bats an eye. (to son-in-law) Is anyone batting an eye Guillaume?
Marquis d’Boildier: A couple hundred de Boildiers curse me from the grave mais ma mere is just relieved I’m getting married. (general laughter)
Marquess d’Boildier (his mother): Et mon fils should have married Rachel seven years ago! (more laughter)
Baron: Vraiment c'est miracle! When a de Boildier marries a Bloch, we truly are at the eve d'un siecle de joie.
Bernard: Petit pere, tu sais mieux que cela.
Baroness: Pas mantenaint Bernard!
Bernard: Regarde Paris!
Robert: Bernard, it’s a fiching toast!
Baroness: Robert! Ton longue!
Baron: Nononon. C'est vrai, we are at the eve of a siecle of peace! Quand mon pere was a jeune, we had revolution every twenty years. En dix-sept quatre-vignt-neuf, my grand grand oncle, Meyer Bloch, left his Yeshiva in Rouen to join La Revolution Francais. Imagine, a Jewish communist... Apres five years, he lost his head in la Tereur. Rest assured Madame la Marquess, the Blochs learned very quickly le cout terrible de revolution. Par le temps Robert becomes Baron de Bloch, Bernard comprendra aussi.
Bernard: You don't understand la prix de standing still!
Baron: Mon grand-grandpere, Solomon Bloch, Meyer's brother, combattu avec Napoleon on la Campagne d'Italie. He became an officer in the War of la deuxieme coalition, wounded at Austerlitz, commanded une division a Friedland, et tout en 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 la societe Solomon Bloch, which manufactured armaments pour le plus grand militaire du mond!
Everyone: Salut! (Bernard grunts)
Baron: La Cabinet de Solomon Bloch soon became Bloch & Son, et quand mon grandpere Edmund Bloch took over, he used Bloch et fills to create the third-largest bank en France.
Everyone except Bernard: Salut! (Bernard grunts)
Baron: Edmund's fils, Victor Bloch, diversified l'enterprise to coal mining, textiles, and railroads. L'aide de mon pere was crucial in making Louis-Napoleon l'empereur apres l’1848 revolution, and in return, was created Baron de Bloch by l'Empereur Napoleon the Third, a great man entirely worthy of his grandfather.
(everyone laughs)
Baroness: Michel not even you can say that without laughing.
Baron: Et maintenant in 1899, it is clair that our ancestors and forefathers have so blessed us, et maintenant: look at our family, look at our nation, look at our world.
Bernard: Oui, regarde…
Baron: …. None of the revolutions since Napoleon erupted into guerre du monde. L’age de revolution est finis! We will now be like the English. The third republique is finally a government for prosperite, peace, and la civilisation. Sans war, sans terreur, sans death.
Marquess: Hourra! Liberte, egalite, stabilite!
Bernard: You’re all using your titles as though ‘71 never happened... Everything that brought les revolutions are still here. Poverty, violence, le fracture culturelle.
Robert: Don’t do it Bernard.
Bernard: Regardez la division in the soul Francaise!
Robert: Don’t say it Bernard.
Bernard: La France must awaken!
Baroness: BERNARD!
Bernard: Regarde l’affaire Dreyfus!
(everybody groans)
Bernard: All the Dreyfuses are stupid as a suitcase without a handle, but regarde how much people hate Alfred.
Marquis: Nobody hates Alfred, they just don't know him.
Baroness: If they knew him they would...
Baron: Voyens Bernard, nous avons tout la hatred people have for us is un grande exaggeration.
Bernard: Ce n'est pas.
Baron: Pierre! Do you hate us?
Pierre: Certainement non Seigneur Bloch!
Baron: You served Alfred Dreyfus often enough, la tu deteste?
Pierre: He did not speak to me enough to make une impression at all.
Baron: Que pense tu de l’Affair Dreyfus?
Pierre: I don’t know enough about it to make any commentaire.
Baron: Est-que tu vois?
Marquess: Beware Monsieur le Baron, servants are much too careful to make their true feelings known.
Pierre: Madame la Marquess I absolument have no feelings on l’Affair Dreyfus.
Baron: For thirty years, Pierre has been le majordome parfait. He came to us from la guarde nationale right before le commune. Outside was anarchie, mais a l'interieur de la maison Bloch was pure order. Every meal and every dessert exactement comme demande, every bed was made. The perfect butler pour la maison parfait.
Pierre: Merci Seigneur.
Marquess: Well, what about Rebecca, wasn’t she brievement engaged to Monsieur Dreyfus’s nephew?
Marquis: MAMAN!
Marquess: It does no good to pretend your fiancee doesn’t know very well the most famous celebrite de 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 demande.
Rachel: I don’t mind.
Marquess: What is famile Dreyfus like?
Rachel: (shrugs) Like us. Ils aiment la 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: Elohaynu
Rachel: meleccch, 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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