FRANCE: Heroic Stomach

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"The art of eating," says the ample Frenchman who is known to all Gallic gourmets as Prince Curnonsky, "has nothing to do with the need for nourishment." The propagation of this great truth has brought the 220-lb. prince not only his title and his brave paunch but an endless succession of free meals. His only regret is that he realized it so late. Born plain Maurice-Edmond Sailland, he ate well, as most people do in his native Loire valley, up to the age of 15, but only for the sake of sustenance. Then his wealthy family hired an illiterate peasant girl named Marie Chevalier as their cook. A native genius, Marie could whip up sauces creamy as clouds and subtle as sunsets; she could pluck a plum tart from the oven at the split second of proper crispness or mash a marron to the delicacy of morning dew. "She civilized me," sighs Curnonsky, repeating an old quip: "She turned my needs into pleasures."

Why Not? The prince has never given up his pursuit of those pleasures. As a dapper, rakish fin de siècle student at the Sorbonne, he got the nickname Cur Non (Why Not?) because of his debonair pursuit of food and fun. (He added the "sky" a few years later when the Czar's fine fleet came to visit France.) In 1921, already famed as a gourmet, he began to write his masterpiece, France Gastronomique, in 28 volumes. "When you're searching for good places to eat in provincial towns," wrote Curnonsky, "see the doctors, the cabdrivers and the priests. They're the ones who know how to eat." Five years later, when Paris Midi asked France's innkeepers, chefs and gourmets to pick a likely candidate for the title Prince of Gastronomes, their choice was immediate—Curnonsky, of course.

You Don't Feel It. Since then the Prince has been heaped with culinary honors. His appearance for dinner at any restaurant is royalty's warrant. Living alone with only a hot plate to cook on, he arises at three each afternoon and breakfasts simply on a boiled egg and warm milk. The business of his day starts at suppertime, when carefully chosen friends knock on the door of his cluttered apartment and escort him to dinner. Last week the Prince reached his 80th birthday, and all France rallied to wish him bon appétit. Some hundred of the nation's most famed restaurateurs and gourmets gathered to share with the master a simple dinner of chicken bouillon, lobster jellied in champagne, spitted ham and truffles, 80 varieties of choice cheeses, bombe glacee and cake, all washed down with simple white Muscadet and 1947 Pu-ligny-Montrachet. "Simple French cooking is always the best," says Curnonsky. "When you've eaten a perfect meal, you know it, you don't feel it."

Feeling no pangs at the end of his snack, the Prince was given his birthday award—80 copper plaques reserving a permanent place for him in each of Paris' top restaurants. It was little enough, as one admiring gourmet said, for one who has dedicated "a heroic stomach to the service of the French cuisine."