"Good. But what do you make of TVRBVL? What is TVRBVL?"
"TVRBVL puzzles me greatly; I cannot think of any epithet applied to Venus which might assist me. Stay, what do you say to TVRBVLENTA? Venus, who troubles and disturbs.... You notice I am all the time thinking of her malignant expression. TVRBVLENTA would not be at all a bad epithet for Venus," I added modestly, for I was not myself quite satisfied with my explanation.
"Venus the turbulent! Venus the broiler! Ah! you think, then, that my Venus is a Venus of the pot-house? Nothing of the kind, Monsieur. She is a Venus belonging to the great world. And now I will expound to you this TVRBVL.... You will at least promise not to divulge my discovery before my treatise is published. I shall become famous, you see, by this find.... You must leave us poor provincial devils a few ears to glean. You Parisian savants are rich enough."
From the top of the pedestal, where I still perched, I solemnly promised that I would never be so dishonourable as to steal his discovery.
"TVRBVL ... Monsieur," he said, coming nearer and lowering his voice for fear anyone else but myself should hear, "read TVRBVLNERÆ."
"I do not understand any better."
"Listen carefully. A league from here, at the base of the mountain, is a village called Boulternère. It is a corruption of the Latin word TVRBVLNERA. Nothing is commoner than such an inversion. Boulternère, Monsieur, was a Roman town. I have always been doubtful about this, for I have never had any proof of it. The proof lies here. This Venus was the local goddess of the city of Boulternère; and this word Boulternère, which I have just shown to be of ancient origin, proves a still more curious thing, namely that Boulternère, after being a Roman town, became a Phœnician one!"
He stopped a minute to take breath, and to enjoy my surprise. I had to repress a strong inclination to laugh.
"Indeed," he went on, "TVRBVLNERA is pure Phœnician. TVR pronounce TOUR.... TOUR and SOUR, are they not the same word? SOUR is the Phœnician name for Tyre. I need not remind you of its meaning. BVL is Baal, Bâl, Bel, Bul, slight differences in pronunciation. As to NERA, that gives me some trouble. I am tempted to think, for want of a Phœnician word, that it comes from the Greek νηρός—damp, marshy. That would make it a hybrid word. To justify νηρός I will show you at Boulternère how the mountain streams there form poisonous swamps. On the other hand, the ending NERA might have been added much later, in honour of Nera Pivesuvia, the wife of Tetricus, who may have done some benevolent act to the city of Turbul. But, on account of the marshes, I prefer the derivation from νηρός."
He took a pinch of snuff with a satisfied air.