Now I have already said that Madame Eugénie Lalande—that is to say, Simpson—spoke the English language but very little better than she wrote it, and for this reason she very properly never attempted to speak it upon ordinary occasions. But rage will carry a lady to any extreme; and in the present care it carried Mrs. Simpson to the very extraordinary extreme of attempting to hold a conversation in a tongue that she did not altogether understand. “Vell, Monsieur,” said she, after surveying me, in great apparent astonishment, for some moments—“Vell, Monsieur?—and vat den?—vat de matter now? Is it de dance of de Saint itusse dat you ave? If not like me, vat for vy buy de pig in the poke?” “You wretch!” said I, catching my breath—“you—you—you villainous old hag!” “Ag?—ole?—me not so ver ole, after all! Me not one single day more dan de eighty-doo.” “Eighty-two!” I ejaculated, staggering to the wall—“eighty-two hundred thousand baboons! The miniature said twenty-seven years and seven months!” “To be sure!—dat is so!—ver true! but den de portraite has been take for dese fifty-five year. Ven I go marry my segonde usbande, Monsieur Lalande, at dat time I had de portraite take for my daughter by my first usbande, Monsieur Moissart!” “Moissart!” said I. “Yes, Moissart,” said she, mimicking my pronunciation, which, to speak the truth, was none of the best,—“and vat den? Vat you know about de Moissart?” “Nothing, you old fright!—I know nothing about him at all; only I had an ancestor of that name, once upon a time.” “Dat name! and vat you ave for say to dat name? ’Tis ver _goot_ name; and so is Voissart—dat is ver goot name too. My daughter, Mademoiselle Moissart, she marry von Monsieur Voissart,—and de name is bot _ver_ respectable name.” “Moissart?” I exclaimed, “and Voissart! Why, what is it you mean?” “Vat I mean?—I mean Moissart and Voissart; and for de matter of dat, I mean Croissart and Froissart, too, if I only tink proper to mean it. My daughter’s daughter, Mademoiselle Voissart, she marry von Monsieur Croissart, and den again, my daughter’s grande daughter, Mademoiselle Croissart, she marry von Monsieur Froissart; and I suppose you say dat _dat_ is not von _ver_ respectaable name.” “Froissart!” said I, beginning to faint, “why, surely you don’t say Moissart, and Voissart, and Croissart, and Froissart?”