What a change from the Paris of the Third Empire!
I had been suddenly translated from an airy, flower-festooned apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, to a dirty brick lodging-house in the Pentonville Road, with a soot-garden in front and a dingy penitentiary across the way.
Never before had I seen a brick house, soot-garden, or penitentiary; and novelty for once failed to lure my youthful eye.
It was then that the purple-faced landlady in the rusty black gown assured my father that the place was "exceedingly respectable."
"What is that?" asked my elder brother John in French—"c'est tres quoi?"
"Respectable," repeated my father.
"Respectable," quoth John. "What we call triste, hein?"
And my father, who was ever grave as a tetrarch, smiled.
I knew only two or three English phrases then, such as "I am pretty and vell; how vos you?" "If you please," "menny of zem," etc. etc.