For once—now for once only, let me make a boast.
Small as I am, I have rendered a valuable service to the land of my adoption. Yes, a service to England, nothing short of that.
For over fifteen years, the French examiners in the University of London invariably every year asked the candidates for Matriculation the following question—I had almost said riddle:
"Which is the only French substantive ending in ence that is of the masculine gender, and why?"
You may picture to yourself the unhappy candidates, scratching their heads, and going, in their minds, through the forty and some thousand words which make up the French vocabulary.
Those only who were "in the know" could answer that the famous word was silence, as it came from the Latin neuter noun silentium, the other French nouns ending in ence (from Latin feminine nouns in entia) being feminine.
"Well," I said one day to the examiner, an eminent confrère and friend, "don't you think you make the candidates waste a good deal of their valuable time, and that it would be better to ask them the question (if you must ask it) in a straightforward manner?"
He thought I was right, and for two years more the question was asked again, but in the following improved manner:
"Explain why silence is the only French noun, ending in ence, that is of the masculine gender."