"Oh, yes; we have them at times. _N'importe_, my little Gogo; cease your supper, you will have the better appetite for your breakfast. You shall have an apple for your breakfast--a large, big apple. Monsieur Philippe, permit me to help you to some of this fish; you will find it a most excellent _farce_:[57] I have preserved it from corruption by a process of vinegar and salt, and some charcoal. Madame Colavering, I will show you that mode of restoring fish when it begins to putrefy: a great chemist taught it to my assassined Alphonse." [Footnote 57: Farce, in French cookery, signifies chopped meat, fish, poultry, well seasoned and mixed with other ingredients.] Uncle Philip pushed away his plate with unequivocal signs of disgust, and moved back his chair, determined not to taste another mouthful while he stayed in the house. Suspicious of everything, he even declined Robertine's solicitations to take a glass of _liqueur_ which she poured out for him, and which she assured him was genuine _parfait amour_.[58] During supper, she had talked to him, in a low voice, of the great superiority of the American nation when compared with the French; and regretted the frivolity and _inconsequence_ of the French character; but assured him that when French ladies had the honour of marrying American gentlemen, they always lost that inconsequence, and acquired much depth and force. [Footnote 58: Perfect love.] After supper, Mr. Franchimeau, who, notwithstanding his taciturnity and _brusquerie_, was what Uncle Philip called a Jack of all trades, sat down to an old out-of-tune piano, that stood in one of the recesses of the back parlour, and played an insipid air of "Paul at the Tomb of Virginia," singing with a hoarse stentorian voice half-a-dozen namby-pamby stanzas, lengthening out or contracting some of the words, and mispronouncing others to suit the measure and the rhyme. This song, however, seemed to produce great effect on the French part of his audience, who sighed, started, and exclaimed--"_Ah! quels sont touchans, ces sentimens sublimes!_"[59] [Footnote 59: Ah! how touching are these sublime sentiments!] "_Ma chère amie_," continued Madame Franchimeau, pressing the hand of Mrs. Clavering, "_permettez que je pleure un peu le triste destin de l'innocence et de la vertu--infortuné Paul--malheureuse Virginie_;"[60] and she really seemed to shed tears. [Footnote 60: My dear friend, permit me to weep a little for the sad fate of innocence and virtue--unfortunate Paul--hapless Virginia.]