It's not unreasonable to be surprised, it's a normal event but depends how much you have travelled in France. Some big hotels and restaurants will change the cutlery after your first course, but almost everywhere else you hold on to your knife and fork until your main course arrives. In some ways it makes sense and is far less irritating than finding one of your party is short of a fork or knife when hot food arrives.
It's almost an offence not to have bread on the table with a meal in France and the basket is refilled as necessary (and you don't pay extra for bread). Wiping your used cutlery on bread before parking it on your napkin or the tablecloth is the way to go. The tablecloth is meant to be laundered and clean after service, there are no side plates for bread, so this too is often put down directly onto the cloth, once it's been taken out of the bread basket. Butter is sometimes offered on the table in tourist areas but only if you are singled out as British.
Eating yummy stuff like Brie and Digestives, with or without butter (!!!) might well be a treat, but cheese in a restaurant is the course before pudding in France. It is eaten on its own, to cleanse the palate, so unless there is bread left and someone still hungry, crackers, butter, biscuits, bread don't normally form any part of the cheese course here.
Enjoy your holiday, Stoker48
