“_Notes on the purity of language._—Languages are like nothing so much as ancient forests in which words have pushed a way for themselves, as chance or opportunity has willed. Among them we find some weird and even monstrous forms, yet, when linked together in speech, they compose into splendid harmonies, and it would be a barbarous act to prune them as one trims the lime-trees on the public roads. One must tread with reverence on what, in the grand style, is termed _the boundless peaks_....” “And my daughters!” thought M. Bergeret. “She ought to have thought of them. She ought to have thought of our daughters....” He went on reading without comprehending a word: “Of course, such a word as this is a mere abortion. We say _le lendemain_, that is to say, _le le en demain_, when, evidently, what we ought to say is _l’en demain_; we say _le lierre_ for _l’ierre_, which alone is correct. The foundations of language were laid by the people. Everywhere in it we find ignorance, error, whim; in its simplicity lies its greatest beauty. It is the work of ignorant minds, to whom everything save nature is a sealed book. It comes to us from afar, and those who have handed it down to us were by no means grammarians after the style of Noël and Chapsal.” Then he thought: “At her age, in her humble, struggling position.... I can understand that a beautiful, idle, much idolised woman ... but she!” Yet, as he was a reader by instinct, he still went on reading: “Let us treat it as a precious inheritance, but, at the same time, let us never look too closely into it. In speaking, and even in writing, it is a mistake to trouble too much about etymology....” “And he, my favourite pupil, whom I have invited to my house ... ought he not?...” “Etymology teaches us that God is _He Who shines_, and that the _soul_ is a _breath_, but into these old words men have read meanings which they did not at first possess.” “Adultery!” This word came to his lips with such force that he seemed to feel it in his mouth like a coin, like a thin medal. Adultery!... Suddenly he saw a picture of all that this word implied, its associations—commonplace, domestic, absurd, clumsily tragic, sordidly comic, ridiculous, uncouth; even in his misery he chuckled. Being well read in Rabelais, La Fontaine, and Molière, he called himself by the downright, outspoken name that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was fitted to his case. But that stopped his laugh, if it could be truthfully said that he had laughed. “Of course,” said he to himself, “it is a petty, commonplace incident in reality. But I am myself suitably proportioned to it, being but an unimportant item in the social structure. It seems, therefore, an important thing to me, and I ought to feel no shame at the misery it brings me.”