Oh, that lesson of French! Two seats at the snug little writing-table,
and only one witness of my blunders; for nobody ever thought of coming
into the drawing-room before the breakfast-bell. Unfortunately for me,
Ollendorff had not yet published his thefts from Manesca; and instead of
that brisk little war of question and answer, which loosens the tongue
so readily to strange sounds and forms the memory so promptly to the
combinations of a new idiom, I had to struggle on through the scanty
rules and multitudinous exceptions of grammar, and pick my way with the
help of a dictionary through the harmonious sentences of "Télémaque."
And never had sentences seemed so harmonious to my ears before; and
never, I fear, before had my young friend's patience been so sorely
tried, or her love of fun put under so unnatural a restraint. "_Calypso
ne pouvait se consoler_," over and over and over again, her rosy lips
moving slowly in order to give distinctness to every articulation, and
her blue eyes fairly dancing with repressed laughter at my awkward
imitation. If my teacher's patience could have given me a good
pronunciation, mine would have been perfect. Day after day she came back
to her task, and ever as the clock told nine would meet me at the door
with the same genial smile.

Nearly twenty years afterwards I found myself once more in Paris, and at
a large party at the house of the American Minister, the late Mr. King.
As I was wandering through the rooms, looking at group after group of
unknown faces, my eye fell upon one that I should have recognized at
once as that of my first teacher of French, if it had not seemed to me
impossible that twenty years could have passed over it so lightly.

"Who is that lady?" I asked of a gentleman near me, whom it was
impossible not to set down at once for an American.