“I saw Cardinal Mezzofanti,” writes M. d’Abbadie, “in 1839. He asked me in Arabic what language I wished to speak, and I, in order to test him, proposed conversing in Basque. I am far from knowing this idiom well; but, as I transact my farmer’s business in Basque, I can easily puzzle a foreigner in it. The Cardinal waived my proposal, and asked me what African language I would speak. I now spoke Amarinna, i.e., the language named _Ancharica_ by Ludolf, who probably added the final _c_ in order to suit the word to Latin articulation. Not being able to answer in Amarinna, Mezzofanti said: _Ti amirnu timhirta lisana Gi-iz_ (‘Have you the knowledge of the Gi-iz language?’) This was well said, and beautifully pronounced, but shewed that the Cardinal got his knowledge of Gi-iz from persons who read, but did not speak it in general. I afterwards ascertained in Abyssinia that no professor, i.e., no person accustomed to colloquial Gi-iz, had been yet in Rome, during this century at least. I may here mention that Gi-iz, generally called Ethiopic in Europe, is the liturgical language in Abyssinia, where it is looked on by the learned as a dead language, although it is still spoken by at least one of the shepherd tribes near the Red Sea. In my visit to Cardinal Mezzofanti, I had with me two Amara Abyssines, with whom he could not speak, as neither of them knew Gi-iz enough, and I had not yet learned that language. My third companion was a Galla, who had taught me his language, viz., Ilmorma, in a most tedious way, for he knew no other tongue, and I was forced to elicit every meaning by a slowly convergent series of questions, which I put every time he used a word new to me. Some of these had until then remained a mystery to me; as the word _self_, and some others of the same abstract class. I had likewise laboured in vain to get the Ilmorma word for ‘soul’; and having mentioned all this to Mezzofanti, I added, that as a philologist and a father of the church, he could render me no better service than giving me the means of teaching my Galla barbarian that he had a soul to be saved. ‘Could not your eminence,’ said I, ‘find the means of learning from this African what is the word for soul? I have written twelve hundred words of his language, which you will certainly turn to better account than I can.’ The Cardinal made no direct answer. I saw him several times afterwards, and he always addressed me in Arabic; but, being a tyro in that language, I could not pretend to judge his knowledge or fluency. However, a native Syrian then in Rome, told me that both were admirable: this referred, I suppose now, to the Syrian dialect.”