For a long time I practised it in the streets of Paris, the city of efficient chatter, the city in which wayfarers talk with more exuberance and more grammar than anywhere else. Here are a few phrases, fair samples from lists of hundreds, which I have gathered and stored, on the boulevards and in quieter streets, such as the Rue Blanche, where conversation grows intimate on mild nights:—
She is mad.
She lived on the fourth floor last year.
Yes, she is not bad, after all.
Thou knowest, my old one, that my wife is a little bizarre.
He has left her.
They say she is very jealous.
Anything except oysters.
Thou annoyest me terribly, my dear.
It is a question solely of the cache-corset.