"Je l'espère, bien, mademoiselle."
"You may despair bien, cousin Eve," said John Effingham, whose fine curvilinear face curled even more than usual with contempt.
The ladies whispered a few explanations, and Mr. Dodge, who fancied it was only necessary to resolve to be perfect to achieve his end, went on with his comments, with all the self-satisfaction of a provincial critic.
"'From Notter Dam I proceeded in a cabrioly to the great national burying-ground, Pere la Chaise, so termed from the circumstance that its distance from the capital renders chaises necessary for the convoys--"
"How's this, how's this!" interrupted Mr. Truck; "is one obliged to sail under a convoy about the streets of Paris?"
"Monsieur Dodge veut dire, convoi. Mr. Dodge mean to say, convoi" kindly interposed Mademoiselle Viefville.
"Mr. Dodge is a profound republican, and is an advocate for rotation in language, as well as in office: I must accuse you of inconstancy, my dear friend, if I die for it. You certainly do not pronounce your words always in the same way, and when I had the honour of carrying you out this time six months, when you were practising the continentals, as you call them, you gave very different sounds to many of the words I then had the pleasure and gratification of hearing you use."
"We all improve by travelling, sir, and I make no question that my knowledge of foreign language is considerably enlarged by practice in the countries in which they are spoken."
Here the reading of the journal was interrupted by a digression on language, in which Messrs. Dodge, Monday, Templemore, and Truck were the principal interlocutors, and during which the pitcher of punch was twice renewed. We shall not record much of this learned discussion, which was singularly common-place, though a few of the remarks may be given as a specimen of the whole.
"I must be permitted to say," replied Mr. Monday to one of Mr. Dodge's sweeping claims to superiority in favour of his own nation, "that I think it quite extraordinary an Englishman should be obliged to go out of his own country in order to hear his own language spoken in purity; and as one who has seen your people, Mr. Dodge, I will venture to affirm that nowhere is English better spoken than in Lancashire. Sir George, I drink your health!"