Her husband came in at that moment, and she lost no time in relating the whole of our conversation.  He laughed heartily, but he said I was right.  Her niece arrived a few minutes after; she was a young girl about fourteen years of age, reserved, modest, and very intelligent.  I had given her five or six lessons in Italian, and as she was very fond of that language and studied diligently she was beginning to speak.

Wishing to pay me her compliments in Italian, she said to me,

“’Signore, sono in cantata di vi Vader in bona salute’.”

“I thank you, mademoiselle; but to translate ‘I am enchanted’, you must say ‘ho pacer’, and for to see you, you must say ’di vedervi’.”

“I thought, sir, that the ‘vi’ was to be placed before.”

“No, mademoiselle, we always put it behind.”

Monsieur and Madame Preodot were dying with laughter; the young lady was confused, and I in despair at having uttered such a gross absurdity; but it could not be helped.  I took a book sulkily, in the hope of putting a stop to their mirth, but it was of no use:  it lasted a week.  That uncouth blunder soon got known throughout Paris, and gave me a sort of reputation which I lost little by little, but only when I understood the double meanings of words better.  Crebillon was much amused with my blunder, and he told me that I ought to have said after instead of behind.  Ah! why have not all languages the same genius!  But if the French laughed at my mistakes in speaking their language, I took my revenge amply by turning some of their idioms into ridicule.

“Sir,” I once said to a gentleman, “how is your wife?”

“You do her great honour, sir.”

“Pray tell me, sir, what her honour has to do with her health?”

I meet in the Bois de Boulogne a young man riding a horse which he cannot master, and at last he is thrown.  I stop the horse, run to the assistance of the young man and help him up.

“Did you hurt yourself, sir?”

“Oh, many thanks, sir, au contraire.”

“Why au contraire!  The deuce!  It has done you good?  Then begin again, sir.”

And a thousand similar expressions entirely the reverse of good sense. 
But it is the genius of the language.

I was one day paying my first visit to the wife of President de N——­, when her nephew, a brilliant butterfly, came in, and she introduced me to him, mentioning my name and my country.

“Indeed, sir, you are Italian?” said the young man.  “Upon my word, you present yourself so gracefully that I would have betted you were French.”

“Sir, when I saw you, I was near making the same mistake; I would have betted you were Italian.”

Another time, I was dining at Lady Lambert’s in numerous and brilliant company.  Someone remarked on my finger a cornelian ring on which was engraved very beautifully the head of Louis XV.  My ring went round the table, and everybody thought that the likeness was striking.