Seductive Gems From the Kitchen Of an Artisan

"I'm in a rush," she pants. She's come for macarons (not to be confused with coconut macaroons), a specialty in Renard's shop. Oh no, not for herself, she explains. They are gifts for the housekeepers and cooks at her weekend house in the countryside.

While Renard packs the puffy, flavor-infused biscuits, the customer plucks a foil-wrapped candied chestnut from the glass platter on the counter. She gobbles the sweet in three voracious bites.

As she paws through a bowl of carmels, she explains: "I wouldn't go to a supermarket. I like small shops. It smells nice, and everything's handmade."

Renard snips and curls the red ribbons around the boxes and rings up a bill the equivalent of $76. No charge for the $2.40 chestnut.

"It's a game we play," Renard remarks as the door slams behind her. "She comes in and helps herself. She knows I won't charge her. She's a good customer."

It's some Japanese and German tourists who really annoy Renard.

"They touch the boxes and drop the boxes -- it's very bad for the chocolate," he says. "Sometimes they just throw the chocolate in the bottom of their bag. Maybe they ruin the chocolate."

Renard (who notes that the most polite tourists tend to be Americans and Spaniards) fills his boxes as gently as if his shimmering morsels were eggs. No bumping, no bruising, no scratching, no breaking.

Just after 2 p.m., a heavyset woman hobbles into the shop and sinks into a cane chair just inside the door. Outside it has started to rain. The customer's doughy face is framed by a plastic, polka-dotted rain cap. She's visiting relatives in Paris and is returning home to northern France the next day. As Renard prepares her boxes of assorted pieces, he hands her a dark chocolate heart. She munches contentedly.

"I'm going to keep them on the window sill where they will stay cool," she says of her precious purchase.

Renard nods approvingly. "The older people always want to buy their chocolate in Paris," he explains. "Other places have chocolate, but they think chocolate from Paris is better."

Don't ask Renard for any of his chocolate-making secrets, however. He won't even tell the government, which has issued a new decree that chocolatiers must list all ingredients on their boxes and packets of chocolate. Parisian chocolatiers -- who have always treated their formulas like state secrets -- have declined to comply.

"It would give artisans a bad image," Renard says. "It would make chocolate less magic, less mysterious."