Germain. Too impatient to
write in French, the old lady posted off a furious disavowal of the
little adventuress in vigorous vernacular, but, adds the author, as
Madame la Duchesse had only passed twenty years in England, she didn't
understand one word. It may be hoped that the new Academician will, in
conjunction with the new minister of public instruction, Mr. Waddington,
who is a Rugby and Cambridge man, have some effect in arousing his
countrymen to the study which they have heretofore so strangely
neglected of a tongue which threatens to obliterate in time the
inconveniences occasioned by the Tower of Babel. English is every day
more and more spoken, and French less and less.
In delivering his address of welcome to M. Lemoinne, M. Cavillier Fleury
said: "You are one of the creators of the discussion of foreign affairs
in the French papers: you gave them the taste for interesting themselves
in the concerns of foreign countries. Few of us before steam had
shortened distance really knew England. Voltaire had by turns glorified
and ridiculed it; De Stael had shown it to us in an agreeable book; the
witty letters of Duvergier de Hauranne had revealed the secrets of its
electoral system. Your correspondence of 1841 completed the work." He
might pertinently have added, "Because you are about the only French
newspaper writer who ever thoroughly understood the English language,
and could thus avoid ridiculous blunders.
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