M.Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter's eye he collected his wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her commands.
"Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?"he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
"To study French?" asked Newman, staring.
M.Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his shoulders.
"A little conversation!"
"Conversation--that's it!" murmured Mademoiselle Noemie, who had caught the word."The conversation of the best society.""Our French conversation is famous, you know," M.Nioche ventured to continue."It's a great talent.""But isn't it awfully difficult?" asked Newman, very simply.
"Not to a man of esprit, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every form!"and M.Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter's Madonna.
"I can't fancy myself chattering French!" said Newman with a laugh.
"And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better.""Monsieur expresses that very happily.Helas, oui!""I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris, to know the language.""Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say: difficult things!""Everything I want to say is difficult.But you give lessons?"Poor M.Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly.
"I am not a regular professor," he admitted."I can't nevertheless tell him that I'm a professor," he said to his daughter.
"Tell him it's a very exceptional chance," answered Mademoiselle Noemie;"an homme du monde--one gentleman conversing with another!
Remember what you are--what you have been!""A teacher of languages in neither case! Much more formerly and much less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?""He won't ask it," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
"What he pleases, I may say?"
"Never! That's bad style."
"If he asks, then?"
Mademoiselle Noemie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons.
She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward.
"Ten francs," she said quickly.
"Oh, my daughter! I shall never dare."
"Don't dare, then! He won't ask till the end of the lessons, and then I will make out the bill."M.Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood rubbing his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which was not intenser only because it was habitually so striking.
It never occurred to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course M.Nioche knew his own language, and his appealing forlornness was quite the perfection of what the American, for vague reasons, had always associated with all elderly foreigners of the lesson-giving class.
Newman had never reflected upon philological processes.
His chief impression with regard to ascertaining those mysterious correlatives of his familiar English vocables which were current in this extraordinary city of Paris was, that it was simply a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather ridiculous muscular effort on his own part."How did you learn English?"he asked of the old man.
"When I was young, before my miseries.Oh, I was wide awake, then.
My father was a great commercant; he placed me for a year in a counting-house in England.Some of it stuck to me;but I have forgotten!"
"How much French can I learn in a month?""What does he say?" asked Mademoiselle Noemie.
M.Nioche explained.
"He will speak like an angel!" said his daughter.
But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to secure M.Nioche's commercial prosperity flickered up again.
"Dame, monsieur!" he answered."All I can teach you!"And then, recovering himself at a sign from his daughter, "I will wait upon you at your hotel.""Oh yes, I should like to learn French," Newman went on, with democratic confidingness."Hang me if I should ever have thought of it! I took for granted it was impossible.
But if you learned my language, why shouldn't I learn yours?"and his frank, friendly laugh drew the sting from the jest.
"Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you must think of something cheerful to converse about.""You are very good, sir; I am overcome!" said M.Nioche, throwing out his hands."But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!""Oh no," said Newman more seriously."You must be bright and lively;that's part of the bargain."
M.Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart."Very well, sir;you have already made me lively."
"Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it, and we will talk about that.That will be a cheerful subject!"Mademoiselle Noemie had collected her accessories, and she gave the precious Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards out of sight, holding it at arm's-length and reiterating his obeisance.
The young lady gathered her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne, and it was with the smile of a Parisienne that she took leave of her patron.