Now I have a French friend, Henri, one of those annoying Frenchmen who
talks English much better than I do, and Henri, for some extraordinary
reason, had seen my review. He has to live in London now, but his
heart is in Paris; and I imagine that every word of his beloved
language which appears, however casually, in an English paper
mysteriously catches his eye and brings the scent and sounds of the
_boulevards_ to him across the coffee-cups. So the next time I met
him he shook me warmly by the hand, and told me how glad he was that I
was an admirer of ANTOINE VAURELLE'S novels.
"Who isn't?" I said with a shrug, and, to get the conversation on
to safer ground, I added hastily that in some ways I almost liked
_Consolatrice_ best.
He shook my hand again. So did he. A great book.
"But of course," he said, "one must read it in the original French. It
is the book of all others which loses by translation."
"Of course," I agreed. Really, I don't see what else I could have
done.
"Do you remember that wonderful phrase ----" and he rattled it off.
"Magnificent, is it not?"
"Magnificent," I said, remembering an appointment instead.
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