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Henry James recounts his accomodations in the French town of Narbonne: 

"I sat down with a hundred hungry marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of the rich soil of Languedoc adhering to their hands and their boots...It was very hot and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the strongest odor; there was in particular a horrible mixture known as gras-double, a light gray, glutinous, nauseating mess, which my companions devoured in large quantities." 

Not his usual drawing room crowd.