Poor little fellow! it is most probable that no dictionary within his reach would have explained to him that the expression bonne fille meant "good-humored."
O Bossuet, veil thy face!
The finest piece of French prose in existence is undoubtedly the following sentence, taken from Bossuet's funeral oration on the Great Condé:
"[Restait ] cette redoutable infanterie de l'armée d'Espagne, dont les gros bataillons serrés, semblables à autant de tours, mais à des tours qui sauraient réparer leurs brèches, demeuraient inébranlables au milieu de tout le reste en déroute, et lançaient des feux de toutes parts."
This reads like a chant of Homer, does it not? It reads quite differently in boys' translations, I assure you, when you come to "towers that would be able to mend their breaches."
This confirms you in your belief that nothing improves by translation—except a bishop.
From my little collection of what is called in the scholastic profession "Howlers," I extract the following, with my apologies to their perpetrators.