“I play chess, draughts, and nain jaune. I don’t care much for cards, but sometimes I play Chinese bezique, because it is very long, and passes the time. I am a very bad player, and I hate to lose—it enrages me. This is ridiculous and silly, I know, but there it is! I can’t bear to be beaten!”
“What do you think of American scenery?”
“I don’t like it. Everything is so big—too big in fact—nothing but mountains with tops that you can’t see; steppes that stretch away to the horizon, immense trees and plants, and skies that look ten times as high as ours. All these things have a supernatural effect, and when I come back Paris looks like a dear little trinket in a miniature case.”
In La Dame de Chalant.
“And the public?”
“I can’t call them anything but delightful! They adore me! In the principal American cities, every one of a certain class understands French, and as the prices are, of course, very high, the audience is largely composed of this class. In some places I have regular first-night audiences, who note the smallest effects and shades of diction.”
“What about those who don’t understand French?”
“They buy books containing the French text with the translation opposite. This has a curious effect; everybody turns over at the same time, and it sounds like a shower of rain a second long.”
All these details, and the manner in which they were told, were very amusing. I could have gone on asking questions all night, but as it was becoming late I hastened to put my most inquisitive queries.