Oon Conversarzyony Frongsay.

The Bernhardt engagement has brought out all the French scholars in Chicago. Never before had we suspected that there were so many able linguists 275in the midst of us. Gen. Stiles, we have just discovered, speaks French like a native of Paris (Edgar County). He attended the “Frou-Frou” performance last evening with his friend Judge Prendergast. The judge is a proficient Greek and Latin scholar; but he knows little of French, his vocabulary being limited to such phrases as “fo par,” “liaison,” “kelky shoze,” and “olly bonnur:” so Gen. Stiles had to explain the play to him as it progressed last evening.

“Now what is she saying?” the judge would ask.

“She said, ‘Good-evening,’” the general would answer.

“Does ‘bung swor’ mean ‘good-evening’?” the judge would inquire.

“Yes.”

“Oh, what rot!” the judge would exclaim; and then a dude usher in one of Willoughby & Hill’s nineteen-dollar dress-suits would teeter down the aisle, and warn the gentlemen not to whisper so loud.

Presently Col. William Penn Nixon, the gifted editor of “The Inter-Ocean,” came along, and slipped into the seat next to Gen. Stiles. He had an opera-glass, and he levelled it at once at Bernhardt’s red, red hair.

“Do you speak French?” asked Gen. Stiles in the confidential tone of a member of the Citizens’ Committee.

276“Oony poo,” said Col. Nixon guardedly.

“Vooley voo donny moy voter ver de lopera?” asked the general, motioning toward the opera-glass.

“See nay par zoon ver de lopera!” protested the colonel. “Say lay zhoomels.”

“Mong doo! What do I want of zhoomels?” cried Gen. Stiles. “Zhoomels is twins!”

“Par bloo!” said Col. Nixon: “it is not twins, it is opera-glasses.”

“You’re all wrong, William,” urged the general. “The French idiom is ‘the glass of the opera.’ ‘Ver’ is glass, and ‘de lopera’ is of the opera.”

“I have heard them called lornyets,” suggested Judge Prendergast, in the deferential tone of a young barrister seeking a change of venue.

“Well, I don’t know what the general’s opera-glass is,” said Col. Nixon; “but this one of mine is a ‘lay zhoomels.’”

“Call it what you please,” replied the judge: “it is de tro as far as I am concerned, until the corpse de bally makes its ontray.”

“I thought you didn’t speak French,” said Gen. Stiles, turning fiercely upon the judge.

“Oh, well!” the judge explained apologetically, “I’m not what you and the colonel would call oh fay—I’m a june primmer at the business; but when the wind is southerly, I reckon I can tell a grizet from a garsong.”

277Chicago society is still in considerable doubt as to where Bernhardt should be located in the artistic scale. A good many of the élite think that her Fedora is second to Fanny Davenport’s, and there are very many others who prefer Clara Morris’s Camille. We notice that the popular inquiry in cultured circles is, “Have you been to see Bernhardt?” not, “Have you been to hear Bernhardt?”

“Oh, you don’t know how I enjoyed Bayernhayerdt the other evening!” exclaimed one of our most beautiful and accomplished belles. “Her dresses are beautiful, and they do say she is dreadfully naughty!”