'Why, such as Nozhan-Tsent-Lorran (Nogent Saint Lorraine), a regular bandit's name!'
Fomushka inquired incidentally, 'Who was the sovereign now in Paris?'
They told him 'Napoleon', and that seemed to surprise and pain him.
'Why so?'
'Why, he must be such an old man,' he began, and stopped, looking round him in confusion.
Fomushka knew very little French, and read Voltaire in a translation (in a secret box under the head of his bed he kept a manuscript translation of Candide), but he occasionally dropped expressions like 'That, my dear sir, is fausse parquet' (in the sense of 'suspicious', 'untrue'), at which many people laughed till a learned Frenchman explained that it was an old parliamentary expression used in his country until the year 1789.
Seeing that the conversation had turned on France and the French, Fimushka screwed up her courage to inquire about one thing which was very much on her mind. She first thought of applying to Markelov, but he looked very ill-tempered; she might have asked Solomin . . . but no! she thought, 'he's a plain sort of person; he's sure not to know French.' So she addressed herself to Nezhdanov.
'There's something, my dear sir, I should
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