“And I have said all these things?” said Belle.  “Yes,” said I; “you have said them in Armenian.”  “I would have said them in no language that I understood,” said Belle; “and it was very wrong of you to take advantage of my ignorance, and make me say such things.”  “Why so?” said I; “if you said them, I said them too.”  “You did so,” said Belle; “but I believe you were merely bantering and jeering.”  “As I told you before, Belle,” said I, “the chief difficulty which I find in teaching you Armenian proceeds from your persisting in applying to yourself and me every example I give.”  “Then you meant nothing after all?” said Belle, raising her voice.  “Let us proceed,” said I; “sirietsi, I loved.”  “You never loved any one but yourself,” said Belle; “and what’s more. . .”  “Sirietsits, I will love,” said I; “sirietsies, thou wilt love.”  “Never one so thoroughly heartless,” said Belle.  “I tell you what, Belle, you are becoming intolerable, but we will change the verb; or rather I will now proceed to tell you here, that some of the Armenian conjugations have their anomalies; one species of these I wish to bring before your notice.  As old Villotte {343} says—­from whose work I first contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian—­’Est verborum transitivorum, quorum infinitivus . . .’ but I forgot, you don’t understand Latin.  He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is in outsaniel; the preterite in outsi; the imperative in oue; for example—­parghat-soutsaniem, I irritate . . .”

“You do, you do,” said Belle; “and it will be better for both of us if you leave off doing so.”

“You would hardly believe, Belle,” said I, “that the Armenian is in some respects closely connected with the Irish, but so it is; for example, that word parghat-soutsaniem is evidently derived from the same root as feargaim, which, in Irish, is as much as to say I vex.”

“You do, indeed,” said Belle, sobbing.

“But how do you account for it?”

“O man, man!” said Belle, bursting into tears, “for what purpose do you ask a poor ignorant girl such a question, unless it be to vex and irritate her?  If you wish to display your learning, do so to the wise and instructed, and not to me, who can scarcely read or write.  Oh, leave off your nonsense; yet I know you will not do so, for it is the breath of your nostrils!  I could have wished we should have parted in kindness, but you will not permit it.  I have deserved better at your hands than such treatment.  The whole time we have kept company together in this place, I have scarcely had one kind word from you, but the strangest . . .” and here the voice of Belle was drowned in her sobs.

“I am sorry to see you take on so, dear Belle,” said I.  “I really have given you no cause to be so unhappy; surely teaching you a little Armenian was a very innocent kind of diversion.”

“Yes, but you went on so long, and in such a strange way, and made me repeat such strange examples, as you call them, that I could not bear it.”