Madame Preodot, who was one of my pupils, received me one morning; she was still in bed, and told me that she did not feel disposed to have a lesson, because she had taken medicine the night previous. Foolishly translating an Italian idiom, I asked her, with an air of deep interest, whether she had well ‘decharge’?
“Sir, what a question! You are unbearable.”
I repeated my question; she broke out angrily again.
“Never utter that dreadful word.”
“You are wrong in getting angry; it is the proper word.”
“A very dirty word, sir, but enough about it. Will you have some breakfast?”
“No, I thank you. I have taken a ‘cafe’ and two ‘Savoyards’.”
“Dear me! What a ferocious breakfast! Pray, explain yourself.”
“I say that I have drunk a cafe and eaten two Savoyards soaked in it, and that is what I do every morning.”
“You are stupid, my good friend. A cafe is the establishment in which coffee is sold, and you ought to say that you have drunk ‘use tasse de cafe’”