"Then I discommend your corduroys. But I approve your laugh. Laugh again—only at the right matter: laugh at this"
And, opening his book again, he read a long passage as I walked beside him; but I could make neither head nor tail of it.
"That is from the 'Sentimental Journey,' by Laurence Sterne, the most beautiful of your English wits. Ah, he is more than French! Laugh at it."
It was rather hard to laugh thus to order; but suddenly he set me the example, showing two rows of very white teeth, and fetching from his hollow chest a sound of mirth so incongruous with the whole aspect of the man, that I began to grin too.
"That's right; but be louder. Make the sounds that you made just now"
He broke off sharply, being seized with an ugly fit of coughing, that forced him to halt and lean on his staff for a while. When he recovered we walked on together after the geese, he talking all the way in high-flown sentences that were Greek to me, and I stealing a look every now
