France: Desired Items are not free

[Iris]

Hazy recall but here goes: on a vacation with my much older sister and female cousin (note: I've never been on vacation with either before, so unusual), could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance, so I assume we were in France. We were walking along, and outside a restaurant, a woman at a table was offering free chocolate samples of different varieties, so of course we sampled and I started to turn away with white chocolate samles in hand. Then as my sister and cousin continued to look over the samples, I realized they were not in fact free, and I felt very guilty, and started to turn back to return or pay for what I'd taken.