Professor Williams took as his starting point the idea of a person entirely without morality and was soon deep into the tangle

Professor Williams took as his starting point the idea of a person entirely without morality and was soon deep into the tangle of subjectivism – the notion that moral judgements are nothing more than a matter of opinion. According to this line of thinking, moral codes can legitimately vary from one society to another. None are objectively superior.Monsieur Yvon at La Ferme de Biorne in the rolling landscape of Lunas (at least it was undulating gently on the way back from our five-hour meal there) was having none of this. He had just served us a languorous lunch made up almost entirely of produce from his own farm, and to judge by the fare, there was not much on his land but ducks.

The aperitif had been accompanied by a pâté and rillettes of duck, followed by a salad of gésiers (duck gizzards), a soup, a rich stuffed neck of goose, a choice of confit or magret, before a local goat’s cheese and home-made gâteau de noix. But his piÿce de résistance was his foie gras, the richest and creamiest of pâtés made entirely from duck liver. It is, indeed, the pride of the region.Yet not everyone is as keen, particularly since to ensure the fattest and tastiest livers, the farmers of the region, or more usually their wives, force-feed the ducks and geese for the last three weeks of their lives by stuffing a funnel down their throats and pouring in corn which, when digested, forces the liver to grow considerably in size.The French call the practice le gavage and are so proud of it they sell you postcards of ancient dames with outstretched goose neck in one hand and funnel in the other. The old maxim de gustibus non disputandum (you can’t argue about taste) is of no help here, Prof Williams tells us, since it is a principle of etiquette rather than morality The same applies to the idea of doing in Rome as Romans do. Subjectivists might well disagree, since their moral relativism insists that any society can sanction anything and it’s not for other cultures to object.Monsieur Yvon and his compatriots have the clincher on this.

During the war, when the Nazis invaded, one of the few new laws they introduced was the banning of gavage on the grounds that it was cruel. Another, of course, was provision for the area’s Jews to be rounded up and transported to Auschwitz for extermination. Moral philosophy, of course, has an answer to that grotesque juxtaposition, but corrections in logic seemed to lack the force of such a rhetorical flourish. I deferred and – as the farmer launched forth about Britain’s need to choose between the European Union and the United States – bought a jar of canard à l’orange to take home.Next on the agenda was spitting. Our friends wanted to take us to the local château for a wine-tasting. I was undaunted, having considerable experience of the consumption of what Keats called “the blushful Hippocrene” and having heard on the telly all the jargon about gooseberries, weight and flinty terroir But I had reckoned without the spitting “Madame will make you taste everything She always does,” said my friend.

“Fortunately she has a huge spittoon so you don’t have to swallow.”At first I hid behind the customary macho English protestations about “what a waste of good wine” My friend was unimpressed “You’ll get hopelessly drunk. You won’t be in a fit state to taste the sweet wines which come at the end – and they are the best. You have to spit.”I took a bottle of water out into the garden and began to practice. Spitting was something I tended to opt out of at school (like seeing how far you could pee up the lavatory wall) I hadn’t been very good at either.

“See if you can hit that daisy,” my friend said helpfully.I stuck out my chin I pursed my lips I curled my tongue. Eventually I succeeded, but only after doing the gardener out of the job of watering the rest of the lawn. The trouble was that my splendid gouts of tongue-curled liquid issued forth in firm projectiles – but only for a few feet before petering out into a spluttering shower. Success could only be guaranteed if I knelt a few feet above the hapless flower. What was Madame going to make of a wine-taster who not only finished on his knees but started on them? I decided to swallow.The kneeling might have been penitential, of course. I had reached the point in my holiday reading when Professor Williams tackled utilitarianism, a philosophy he rejects as less logical (and somehow more vulgar) than one predicated on a belief in the transcendent He was talking religion The French are big on that, in their peculiar way.