Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/93

 touches; you probably perceive them, sir. It attracted great attention on the Boulevard as we came along. And then a gradation of tones! That's what it is really to know how to paint. I don't say it because I'm her father, sir; but as one man of taste addressing another I can't help observing that you've acquired an object of price. It's hard to produce such things and to have to part with them. If our means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I in fact may say, sir"—and M. Nioche showed a feebly insinuating gaiety—"I really may say that I envy you your privilege. You see," he added in a moment, "we've taken the liberty of offering you a frame. It increases by a trifle the value of the work and it will save you the annoyance—so great for a person of your delicacy—of going about to bargain at the shops."

The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which may not here be reproduced in its integrity. He had apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged with old cockneyisms and vulgarisms, things quaint and familiar. But his learning had grown rusty with disuse and his vocabulary was defective and capricious. He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicised by a process of his own, with native idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader, so that I have ventured to attempt for it some approximate notation. Newman only half followed, but he was always amused, and the old man's decent 63