Moviegoers will want to augment their starchy, sinewy Roman vengeance diet with the herby Gallic mother sauce battering this “Monte Cristo” — after all, “Gladiator” tips its helmet to “Ben-Hur,” which was directly inspired by Dumas’ payback classic.

It was bookended by a prelude in the Tuileries — where a choral rendition of Edith Piaf’s apropos “Sous le ciel de Paris” accompanied French swimming champ Léon Marchand taking a bit of Olympic flame to pass on to us — and a Gallic version of a Super Bowl halftime show, anchored by the band Phoenix.

Like any modern city, Paris’ early inhabitants raised their own food; the Romans, who called the place Lutetia, coaxed grapes and figs from the Gallic soil.

Moving from a diet of meadow bugs and worms to a mash of corn flour and milk in its final sedentary weeks, this revered Gallic bird acquires a unique muscular succulence.

Laurent de Brunhoff, the French artist who nurtured his father’s creation, a beloved, very Gallic and very civilized elephant named Babar, for nearly seven decades — sending him, among other places, into a haunted castle, to New York City and into outer space — died on Friday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 98.