A European Love Story
 

This true story is dedicated to our precious Calamari who took so much grief for thinking fondly of sweet love in a far away place. May romance never leave our lives. Sometimes dreams do come true.


It was a cold, wet day and I was dazed and confused as I trotted through the decaying leaves in Jardin du Luxembourg on my way to St. Sulpice. I had tossed and turned all night on a hard cot in my attic loft; listening to the rain and the mice nibble on the wiring in the walls.

When dawn finally came, I opened my tiny window and heard Church bells ringing in the far distance. They seemed to be telling me to attend mass, something I had not done in over ten years. Maybe it was one last attempt to find answers and recapture my dream. My brain told me that further struggle was futile. Paris is a very expensive place to live. The rent was a month overdue and I had taken to going with out eating and hitting up friends for invitations to dinner. Maybe it was time to hand in my letter of resignation and quit my job as a tour leader and jack-of-all-trades for a small tourist company that catered to Americans. Yet, my young heart was still not ready to concede defeat.

I eased into the last row of pews just as mass began. As I reached for a prayer book, I heard the ancient doors of the church groan open and a strong gust of warm, perfumed air flowed past me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end before I turned and was stunned to see a perfect vision of beauty and grace standing in the entryway. I wanted to call out to the tall, thin, but full bosomed girl and beg her to sit beside me, but my clumsy tongue refused to obey. I cursed myself for being a coward, but could not find any voice no matter how hard I tried.

Suddenly, a brilliant ray of sunshine pieced the medieval stained glass windows and slowly traced a path across the rough stone floor. On and on it came, in a slow steady movement until it stopped immediately beside me in the pew.

Camille gave me a tender, but powerful smile that outshone a thousand candles and then walked quickly to stand beside me. I reached for her soft, fragile hand and held it in awe, treating it as a secret gift from an angel on high.

I felt that my happiness could be no greater until later that day, after we had walked along the Seine and watched the sunset, when Camille tenderly kissed my feverish cheek and whispered that she was an accomplished gymnast whose father owned a huge bakery.

Man alive. It just doesn't get any better than that!

Degas, you are an absolute stitch! I pictured the whole sequence in slow motion.

Degas,
I had to work today and I was a bit crabby. After reading your story I smiled and I am in a much better mood!!!

Congratulation, You have found yourself a rich girl....no more rent's worry, no more wondering where the next meal will come...camille is surely the girl of your dreams...:)
Cute storuy Degas..

Bravo, Degas.

I did have to find a bigger place to live so Camille could have enough room to show me the full range of her amazing gynastic movements. I still get goose bumps just thinking of some of them.

PS - Please don't tell the "little wife". All of this was years ago before we met.

Barbara Cartland..........your worthy successor has appeared...
Rip my bodice ...here comes egas!!

DEGAS>>>>NOT EGAS!!
I'm so excited I can't type!

Degas, you romantic rascal. You had me thinking that for once you would write a serious story! Oh, by the way, whatever happened to wonderful Camille?

You dog, you!! Woof!

Sighing, hand to fevered brow emoticon please~ ((F))

Degas, did you hear my coughing next door?
mimi who's always la bohémienne.

Coughs you say?

I couldn't hear anything for Camille's wild screams of fiendish delight as she flung her exquisite, finely sculptured body through the air and swung recklessly from the light fixtures in the ceiling.

Why, the first night, she smashed my cot like it was made of toothpicks!

LOL, wishful thinking, Camille said you would say this. She ran off with Juan Hosé the next day. He was in town for a stopover before the gypsy convention in the Camargue.

What a hoot!

Oops, the "other" European Love Story thread (started by Calamari) got locked down! Now what's wrong with a little lust, I ask you?

Cigale -- "San Hosé" -- too funny! :-D

How dare you make fun of my tragic loss! Camille was the lust of my life!

That foul evil cad. That deplorable scoundrel with the morals of a filthy alley cat. He tricked my sweet Camille with grand lies spun from bitter thread! An innocent, naïve girl stood no chance against this depraved swine with a forked tongue!

But have no fear. I searched and searched as if on a sacred mission from God. It took me six long, exhausting months, but I finally tracked the elusive Hoseman down in a cheap one star hotel in Lyon and extracted my revenge by using a ?..

Before I go on, can anyone tell me where I can find a summary of the statue of limitations for various heinous and gross crimes in France?

Doesn't that statue stand in the harbor at Marseilles?

She's a beautiful statue that sits somewhere along the Seine but in a very secretive spot because of fear of other Hosés sullying her marbles.
To summerize her. Beautiful like your Camile

Heinous & Gross were those attorneys that swindled my Daddy out of Tara!!

Degas, are you the same tough guy who served a year on Devil's Island before overpowering five sissy guards and escaping in a hot air balloon piloted by a lovely French maiden?

To look back on dangers past is a far different thing from looking forward to dangers still to come. This is especially true when one is being kissed by a wild tigeress.

Little did I know what grave perils lay ahead as I hugged Camille to my side and laughed like a madman as the ballon floated out of rifle range of the defeated guards manning that hellhole called Devil's Island.

Camille's intense love for me would be tested again soon after we left the steaming jungle and floated across the storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean to a tiny french outpost on the rocky coast of Africa.

It started harmlessly enough when ..... .

Little did we know that Hosé was waiting, to once again claim Camille as his own.

Lordie Lou.......someday I wanna meet this Degas fella, LOL!!!

Was Camille with Pup?

No, Juan Hoseman was long dead. It was my bad luck to run across, his evil twinbrother, Jorge Hoseman. A cruel, vicious swine cut exactly from the same bloody cloth!

are you sure it's not Lou?

Now wait just a minute here! I dated a handsome, confident young man named Jorge Hoseman one summer while in college.

He went on a sudden trip to study tittsue flies in Africa, but came back in the fall with a long, jagged scar across his face, vacant eyes, and hands that wouldn't stop trembling.

No Uncle Same, that was Scarlett with the Pup, that is another story ((F))

Shoot! I met him too, chatnoir, but he had roman hands so I walked away but Camille was there waiting anyway.

Chat, all I can say is that Jorge was no match against my skilled sword on a field of honor! That coward ran at the first horrific gush of blood! I have a tape of the duel if you care to see it.

I sincerely hope he did not befoul you after advancing some clever ruse! He knows better than to dare cross my path again.

Was that a sword??? I thought you were just glad to see me.?

WHile I do not understand why the European love shack thread was shut down, Christmas has come at last with one of Degas' stories!!! I started laughing before I finished the first few lines! You are SO TALENTED!

Tell me Camille is not an overweight matron running a boarding house on the outskirts of Paris, petting her cats and ordering frying pans and spandex pants from the Home Shopping Network!

May she still be swinging from the light fixtures between croissant breaks.

Waiting for Degas to post a picture of his beloved Camille.

cigale - how about one of himself!

I think he's Uncle Sam and he gave a description of himself and that other thread.

Still laughing. I gotta get a life!

Calamari, I knew a true romantic like yourself would enjoy this sad, tragic tale of love, betrayal, turmoil, and redemption.

Camille had a huge impact on my life and I wish her only happiness and peace. We parted ways under bizare conditions, but I know in my heart she is living life to the fullest in Europe.

Perhaps some day she will reach out to us and give us some insight into what has transpired over these many long years of forced seperation.

Degas, too funny. I almost missed this one. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

degas, discard the little woman, 'cause another waits for you, scarlett. behold the fodor's chatboard couple of 2004.