What? The queen
too? Good God! What's this?--My father is dead! Oh, well. The war is
over. Good."--It was Jean le Negre, playing a little game with himself to
beguile the time.
When we had mounted _a la chambre_, two or three tried to talk with this
extraordinary personage in French; at which he became very superior and
announced: "_J'suis anglais, moi. Parlez anglais. Comprends pas francais,
moi._" At this a crowd escorted him over to B. and me--anticipating great
deeds in the English language. Jean looked at us critically and said:
"_Vous parlez anglais? Moi parlez anglais._"--"We are Americans, and
speak English," I answered.--"_Moi anglais_," Jean said. "_Mon pere,
capitaine de gendarmes, Londres. Comprends pas francais, moi._
SPEE-Kingliss"--he laughed all over himself.
At this display of English on Jean's part the English-speaking Hollanders
began laughing. "The son of a bitch is crazy," one said.
And from that moment B. and I got on famously with Jean.
His mind was a child's. His use of language was sometimes exalted
fibbing, sometimes the purely picturesque. He courted above all the sound
of words, more or less disdaining their meaning. He told us immediately
(in pidgeon French) that he was born without a mother because his mother
died when he was born, that his father was (first) sixteen (then) sixty
years old, that his father _gagnait cinq cent franc par jour_ (later, par
_annee_), that he was born in London and not in England, that he was in
the French army and had never been in any army.
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