Les colimaçons [English translation]

I left England with a hood,

very strict values, and a muffler.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted,

Waterloo, Saint Helena, and Napoleon:

I entered, full of mistrust, into the lion's cage.

I set foot in France with wariness.

I liked neither frog legs nor snails!

I was lost, poor girl, in that universe.

The earth, the cars, seemed to go in reverse.

People talked much too fast and way too loud.

The smell of French fries wafted through the air.

I thought: "What a terrible civilization

because the tea is undrinkable in this nation

where they eat frog legs and snails!"

Land of the Folies Bergère, of the pompadour,

"France," said my mother, "is first of all about love.

They will recite poems to you—don't trust them at all.

Watch out on the quais of the Seine—watch out in the subway."

While making smooth talk, singing pretty songs,

a gentleman, one stormy day, said to me: "Good heavens!

What wonderful weather for frog legs and snails! "

But when another gentleman said to me "I love you" a few months later,

I was by then a Parisian or at least as much as needed.

So I let him deliver his entire sales pitch.

I smiled at him and that's how

a defenseless Englishwoman, facing a boy,

under the sky of the Île-de-France, changed her name.

And I eat frog legs and snails!