One glorious college summer I lived in Paris, housed under the slanting roof of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s tiny, unused chambre de bonne.

My goal for the summer was to come home speaking fluent French. But all the college students I met were eager to practice their English. Among them was a droll group of friends who studied at the Institute of Political Studies. In a most French of Saturday outings, they drove me out to Versailles in a battered slate-blue Citroën. It was the first day of the year that the palace fountains were to be running. We wandered down to the water’s edge as the time neared. In my anticipation I didn’t notice that my new French friends had all drifted back from the poolside. The array of jets coughed aloft a curtain of thick orange sludge. The wind was just right. A sheet of water steeped all winter in rusty pipes came down on my head. Not only was I drenched, I was pumpkin-colored. My copains laughed and laughed.