'O,' it
appears, is the French for hot-water. The Colonel (though he despises it
heartily) thinks he speaks the language remarkably well. Whilst he was
inhausting his smoking tea, which went rolling and gurgling down his
throat, and hissing over the 'hot coppers' of that respectable veteran,
a friend joined him, with a wizened face and very black wig, evidently a
Colonel too.
The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other, presently
joined breakfast, and fell into conversation, and we had the advantage
of hearing about the old war, and some pleasant conjectures as to the
next, which they considered imminent. They psha'd the French fleet; they
pooh-pooh'd the French commercial marine; they showed how, in a war,
there would be a cordon ('a cordong, by---') of steamers along our
coast, and 'by ---,' ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other
shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last
war, 'by ---'. In fact, a rumbling cannonade of oaths was fired by the
two veterans during the whole of their conversation.
There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not been above ten
years in London, of course he did not speak the language, and lost the
benefit of the conversation. 'But, O my country!' said I to myself, it's
no wonder that you are so beloved! If I were a Frenchman, how I would
hate you!'
That brutal, ignorant, peevish bully of an Englishman is showing himself
in every city of Europe.
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