ROANNE, France — "When we get to Paris," I told my wife, Tracy, one evening not long before we left on our trip, "we might think about going to the Comedie-Francaise. It's supposed to be fabulous, and by then," I concluded casually, "we'll speak French."
That moment haunted me during the two weeks we spent at l'Ecole des Trois Ponts (Three Bridges School) on the outskirts of Roanne, southeast of Paris. We went there to take an intensive course in French: 25 hours of instruction each week and breakfast, lunch and dinner where only French is spoken. We arrived at the train station in Roanne the first Sunday afternoon in June fully expecting that when we returned to the station two weeks later to catch the train to Paris, we would be chattering away in French as easily and comfortably as we did in our dreams.
Long ago we had been indifferent language students in school. But several summers ago, on a horseback riding trip through the Loire valley in south central France, we were a little embarrassed to find ourselves able to speak only English and a bit of pidgin French in a group of Europeans who all spoke French, English and German with equal ease.
We returned home determined to learn French. Tracy took an introductory course at the local community college while I used instructional tapes in my car and painfully plodded through some of Georges Simenon's inspector Maigret mysteries, with the help of an English translation. We made progress, but it was difficult and slow. And when we tried to speak--once in particular when we ran into a group of French exchange students in an airport--we were given friendly smiles but not understood. Nor could we understand what they were saying to us. We realized the limitations of our haphazard study techniques. If only we could take some time and concentrate on nothing but French. Which is why we enrolled at l'Ecole des Trois Ponts.
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We couldn't have chosen a prettier setting. The school is in a 17th century chateau recently renovated by its present owners who also run the school: Rene Dorel and his wife, Margaret O'Loan. The chateau is isolated on 32 acres of land on the outskirts of Roanne. Everything is simple, neat and attractive. Our room on the second floor had a ceiling at least 20 feet high, a gray carpet and prints of French paintings hung here and there on peach walls. Outside our window was a broad walk leading down to a pond and a wide expanse of grass and trees. All we could hear were songbirds and the pleasant, almost musical croaking of frogs at the pond.
