Marie Hedwich's Coffee Chronicles

Encyclopedia of Marie Hedwich – Part One It was in those days when the sun

still rose with a certain politeness—neither too suddenly nor too boldly—as though it understood that

people of a certain age deserved a gentler awakening. In such days lived Marie Hedwich,

a 67-year-old lady who, despite her venerable number of years, possessed a vitality

that made even the young bakery boys of the village blush. Marie was French, and you noticed

this at the latest when she performed her almost ceremonial morning coffee ritual. She did not drink

her coffee the way other people did, oh no. For Marie, coffee was a personal

theatre: first she smelled it, as if testing the beverage’s moral integrity; then