The soda jerker at South Hadley's sole fountain said bon jour to customers who last week asked for the soda au chocolat. Under the nearby shade trees of Mount Holyoke College's New England campus, entretiens (discussions) raged in French.
There 80-odd scholarly Europeans and Americans had a marvelous time. For Mount Holyoke, long a home of ultra-serious-minded education, was trying earnestly to take the place of Burgundy's 12th-Century Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, until 1939 a sort of Chautauqua for Europe's top-drawer intellectuals.
Original Pontigny. In his Burgundian abbey, Historian-Critic Paul Desjardins, a Sevres...
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