PHI. Did you ever see such impudence? To call a language founded on reason and polite custom a jargon! MAR. Provided one is understood, one speaks well enough, and all your fine speeches don't do me no good. PHI. You see! Is not that her way of speaking, _don't do me no good!_ BEL. O intractable brains! How is it that, in spite of the trouble we daily take, we cannot teach you to speak with congruity? In putting _not_ with _no_, you have spoken redundantly, and it is, as you have been told, a negative too many. MAR. Oh my! I ain't no scholar like you, and I speak straight out as they speaks in our place. PHI. Ah! who can bear it? BEL. What a horrible solecism! PHI. It is enough to destroy a delicate ear. BEL. You are, I must acknowledge, very dull of understanding; _they_ is in the plural number, and _speaks_ is in the singular. Will you thus all your life offend grammar? [Footnote: _Grammaire_ in Molière's time was pronounced as _grand'mère_ is now. _Gammer_ seems the nearest approach to this in English.] MAR. Who speaks of offending either gammer or gaffer? PHI. O heavens! BEL. The word _grammar_ is misunderstood by you, and I have told you a hundred times where the word comes from. MAR. Faith, let it come from Chaillot, Auteuil, or Pontoise, [Footnote: In Molière's time villages close to Paris.] I care precious little. BEL. What a boorish mind! _Grammar_ teaches us the laws of the verb and nominative case, as well as of the adjective and substantive. MAR. Sure, let me tell you, Ma'am, that I don't know those people. PHI. What martyrdom! BEL. They are names of words, and you ought to notice how they agree with each other. MAR. What does it matter whether they agree or fall out? PHI. (_to_ BÉLISE). Goodness gracious! put an end to such a discussion. (_To_ CHRYSALE) And so you will not send her away? CHRY. Oh! yes. (_Aside_) I must put up with her caprice, Go, don't provoke her, Martine. PHI. How! you are afraid of offending the hussy! you speak to her in quite an obliging tone. CHRY. I? Not at all. (_In a rough tone_) Go, leave this place. (_In a softer tone_) Go away, my poor girl. SCENE VII.--PHILAMINTE, CHRYSALE, BÉLISE. CHRY. She is gone, and you are satisfied, but I do not approve of sending her away in this fashion. She answers very well for what she has to do, and you turn her out of my house for a trifle. PHI. Do you wish me to keep her for ever in my service, for her to torture my ears incessantly, to infringe all the laws of custom and reason, by a barbarous accumulation of errors of speech, and of garbled expressions tacked together with proverbs dragged out of the gutters of all the market-places? BEL. It is true that one sickens at hearing her talk; she pulls Vaugelas to pieces, and the least defects of her gross intellect are either pleonasm or cacophony.