French Friends

Re: “It Takes Two to . . .” (Letters, Sept. 28): I first arrived in Paris in 1953, only eight years after the war was over. The Nazis had overrun their proud country in only a month, and the French were still bitter, humiliated and hardly in a hospitable mood.

I never asked anyone if they could speak English. That would have been as presumptuous as if a Frenchman came here and asked us if we spoke his language. I used only my faulty French, followed by “Je regrette, mais je parle francais tres peu et mal.” The response was immediate and warm.

I used to frequent a neighborhood bistro. I got to know the regulars, and whenever I apologized for fracturing their language, they exclaimed, “Non, non, Monsieur Charles, c’est bon, c’est bon!”

CHARLES F. QUEENAN

Los Angeles