The breasty, German woman’s doll-faced daughter pooped in her underwear, wriggling out of her trousers in order to liberate the smelly lump. She complicated our efforts to find peace, toying with the delicate afternoon atmosphere as if it were one of her pot-bellied four year old friends. She paraded through the garden where posh British families dined on lemon tarts more yellow than their hair and less sour than their expressions. Oblivious, the German doll tottered by, her squeals threatening to shred their conversations of parties, politics and Paris. I watched in amusement as the plump, shiny-faced dissenter refused to conform, sloshing water, milk and coffee, so that each liquid uncurled like my curiosity, temporarily staining skirts and shoes, permanently staining our reputations--this motley crew of four--who never could, and never would, stride through the ostentatious door of showy social gatherings--where verbal exchange occurs less between people and more between their expensive commodities.