of a doubtful turbot to the neighbouring "employe de l'octroi"--these and
all their like speak commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own
country the perfection of their dulness. We only, who have the
alternative of plainer and fresher words, understand it. It is not the
least of the advantages of our own dual English that we become sensible
of the mockery of certain phrases that in France have lost half their
ridicule, uncontrasted.

Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation in
all Latin languages--rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, either
majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French this proffers a
frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of an Englishman, no
longer detects. A guard on a French railway, who advised two travellers
to take a certain train for fear they should be obliged to "vegeter" for
a whole hour in the waiting-room of such or such a station seemed to the
less practised tourist to be a fresh kind of unexpected humourist.

One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and
subscriptions in France has more than the intentional comedy of the farce-
writer; one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his visitors
in the country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to them: "Nous jouons
cinquante centimes--les benefices seront verses integralement a la
souscription qui est ouverte a la commune pour la construction de notre
maison d'ecole."

"Fletrir," again. Nothing could be more rhetorical than this perfectly
common word of controversy. The comic dramatist is well aware of the
spent violence of this phrase, with which every serious Frenchman will
reply to opponents, especially in public matters. But not even the comic
dramatist is aware of the last state of refuse commonplace that a word of