Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a
French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with
Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last
seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying
myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as
possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain
degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not
likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and
shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I
led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own
tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at
the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large
hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
"Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr.
Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can
Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame
Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over
the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did
smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.
Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon,
and Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell
out of mine; it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle--what is your
name?"
"Eyre--Jane Eyre."
"Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the
morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city,
with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty
clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms
over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into
a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this
and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and
Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees,
called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and
a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."
"Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs.
Fairfax.
I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent
tongue of Madame Pierrot.