“You do her great honour, sir.”
“Pray tell me, sir, what her honour has to do with her health?”
I meet in the Bois de Boulogne a young man riding a horse which he cannot master, and at last he is thrown. I stop the horse, run to the assistance of the young man and help him up.
“Did you hurt yourself, sir?”
“Oh, many thanks, sir, au contraire.”
“Why au contraire! The deuce! It has done you good? Then begin again, sir.”
And a thousand similar expressions entirely the reverse of good sense. But it is the genius of the language.
I was one day paying my first visit to the wife of President de N——, when her nephew, a brilliant butterfly, came in, and she introduced me to him, mentioning my name and my country.
“Indeed, sir, you are Italian?” said the young man. “Upon my word, you present yourself so gracefully that I would have betted you were French.”
“Sir, when I saw you, I was near making the same mistake; I would have betted you were Italian.”