He began by attacking me on the English language. He said it was utterly absurd and illogical, and though he ought to know it, as he had an English wife, he felt he never could learn it.
"Apropos of to-day's weather, you say, 'It never rains but it pours'—au fond qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? 'Il ne pleut jamais, mais il pleut à verse'; cela n'a pas le sens commun—you might as well say, 'It never pours but it rains.'"
I had to confess that it did sound senseless, and tried to explain the meaning; but he grumbled, "Why don't they say what they mean?" He told me he was once traveling in England and put his head out of the carriage window to see something, and some one inside cried, "Look out!" He put his head still farther out, when the person continued to scream, "Look out!" He answered, "I am looking out," at which a rude hand seized him by the coat-collar and jerked him inside, saying, "Damn it, look in then!"
"How can any one conquer a language as stupid as that?"
I told him I felt humiliated to own such a language, and I ought to apologize for it, though I had not invented it and did not feel responsible for it; but he would not listen to me.
Prince Metternich asked, "What shall we do indoors this awful day?"
I proposed tableaux; but he objected to tableaux.
Then I suggested that one might have a fancy-dress tea-party. At last, after many wild propositions, he said, "Why not charades?"
Of course he had intended charades all the time. He asked the Marquis de
Gallifet if he would help us.
"No, I won't," answered the Marquis, "but you are welcome to my wife; she loves dressing-up and all that nonsense;" adding, "It is the only thing she can do with success."