"Remus," said she, "will you be quiet?"
"But, mamma, it is the 'Fohmidable'!" [13]
"What an unendurable boy!"
"Pouhquoi?" [13]
"He is a duhen [13] [duren, a simpleton]; but this time he is right," called out Romulus, quickly; "yesterday we were at Villa Franca,"—here he turned to Svirski. "You saw us go on velocipedes; they told us there that the whole squadron had arrived except the 'Fohmidable,' which was due to-day."
To this Remus answered with a strong accent on every last syllable,—
"Thou art a duhen, [13] thyself!"
The boys fell to punching each other with their elbows. Pani Elzen, knowing how Svirski disliked her sons' style of speech, and generally the manner in which they were reared, commanded them to be silent.
"I have told you and Pan Kresovich," said she, "not to speak among yourselves in any language but Polish."
Kresovich was a student from Zürich, with incipient lung disease; Pani Elzen had found him on the Riviera, and engaged him as tutor for her sons, after her acquaintance with Svirski, and especially after a public declaration of the malicious and wealthy Pan Vyadrovski, that respectable houses had ceased to rear their sons as commercial travellers.