IT might be about five in the evening when I reached the gypsy
encampment. Here I found Mr. Petulengro, Tawno Chikno, Sylvester and
others in a great bustle, clipping and trimming certain ponies and old
horses which they had brought with them. On inquiring of Jasper the
reason of their being so engaged, he informed me that they were getting
the horses ready for a fair, which was to be held on the morrow, at a
place some miles distant, at which they should endeavour to dispose of
them, adding: “Perhaps, brother, you will go with us, provided you have
nothing better to do?” Not having any particular engagement, I assured
him that I should have great pleasure in being of the party. It was
agreed that we should start early on the following morning. Thereupon I
descended into the dingle. Belle was sitting before the fire, at which
the kettle was boiling. “Were you waiting for me?” I inquired. “Yes,”
said Belle; “I thought that you would come, and I waited for you.” “That
was very kind,” said I. “Not half so kind,” said she, “as it was of you
to get everything ready for me in the dead of last night, when there was
scarcely a chance of my coming.” The tea-things were brought forward,
and we sat down. “Have you been far?” said Belle. “Merely to that
public-house,” said I, “to which you directed me on the second day of our
acquaintance.” “Young men should not make a habit of visiting
public-houses,” said Belle; “they are bad places.” “They may be so to
some people,” said I, “but I do not think the worst public-house in
England could do me any harm.” “Perhaps you are so bad already,” said
Belle, with a smile, “that it would be impossible to spoil you.” “How
dare you catch at my words?” said I; “come, I will make you pay for doing
so—you shall have this evening the longest lesson in Armenian which I
have yet inflicted upon you.” “You may well say inflicted,” said Belle,
“but pray spare me. I do not wish to hear anything about Armenian,
especially this evening.” “Why this evening?” said I. Belle made no
answer. “I will not spare you,” said I; “this evening I intend to make
you conjugate an Armenian verb.” “Well, be it so,” said Belle; “for this
evening you shall command.” “To command is _hramahyel_,” said I. “Ram
her ill, indeed,” said Belle; “I do not wish to begin with that.” “No,”
said I, “as we have come to the verbs, we will begin regularly;
_hramahyel_ is a verb of the second conjugation. We will begin with the
first.” “First of all tell me,” said Belle, “what a verb is?” “A part
of speech,” said I, “which, according to the dictionary, signifies some
action or passion; for example, I command you, or I hate you.” “I have
given you no cause to hate me,” said Belle, looking me sorrowfully in the
face.
“I was merely giving two examples,” said I, “and neither was directed at
you. In those examples, to command and hate are verbs. Belle, in
Armenian there are four conjugations of verbs; the first ends in _al_,
the second in _yel_, the third in _oul_, and the fourth in _il_. Now,
have you understood me?”
“I am afraid, indeed, it will all end ill,” said Belle. “Hold your
tongue,” said I, “or you will make me lose my patience.” “You have
already made me nearly lose mine,” said Belle. “Let us have no
unprofitable interruptions,” said I; “the conjugations of the Armenian
verbs are neither so numerous nor so difficult as the declensions of the
nouns; hear that, and rejoice. Come, we will begin with the verb
_hntal_, a verb of the first conjugation, which signifies to rejoice.
Come along; _hntam_, I rejoice; _hntas_, thou rejoicest; why don’t you
follow, Belle?”
“I am sure I don’t rejoice, whatever you may do,” said Belle. “The chief
difficulty, Belle,” said I, “that I find in teaching you the Armenian
grammar, proceeds from your applying to yourself and me every example I
give. Rejoice, in this instance, is merely an example of an Armenian
verb of the first conjugation, and has no more to do with your rejoicing
than _lal_, which is also a verb of the first conjugation, and which
signifies to weep, would have to do with your weeping, provided I made
you conjugate it. Come along; _hntam_, I rejoice; _hntas_, thou
rejoicest; _hntà_, he rejoices; _hntamk_, we rejoice: now, repeat those
words.”
“I can’t,” said Belle, “they sound more like the language of horses than
of human beings. Do you take me for—?” “For what?” said I. Belle was
silent. “Were you going to say mare?” said I. “Mare! mare! by-the-bye,
do you know, Belle, that mare in old English stands for woman! and that
when we call a female an evil mare, the strict meaning of the term is
merely bad woman. So if I were to call you a mare without prefixing bad,
you must not be offended.” “But I should though,” said Belle. “I was
merely attempting to make you acquainted with a philological fact,” said
I. “If mare, which in old English, and likewise in vulgar English,
signifies a woman, sounds the same as mare, which in modern and polite
English signifies a female horse, I can’t help it. There is no such
confusion of sounds in Armenian, not, at least, in the same instance.
Belle, in Armenian, woman is _ghin_, the same word, by-the-bye, as our
queen, whereas mare is _madagh tzi_, which signifies a female horse; and
perhaps you will permit me to add, that a hard-mouthed jade is, in
Armenian, _madagh tzi hsdierah_.”
“I can’t bear this much longer,” said Belle. “Keep yourself quiet,” said
I; “I wish to be gentle with you; and to convince you, we will skip
_hntal_, and also for the present verbs of the first conjugation and
proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the
prettiest verb in Armenian; not only of the second, but also of all the
four conjugations; that verb is _siriel_. Here is the present tense:
_siriem_, _siries_, _sirè_, _siriemk_, _sirèk_, _sirien_. You observe
that it runs on just in the same manner as _hntal_, save and except that
the _e_ is substituted for _a_; and it will be as well to tell you that
almost the only difference between the second, third and fourth
conjugations, and the first, is the substituting in the present,
preterite and other tenses, _e_ or _ou_ or _i_ for _a_; so you see that
the Armenian verbs are by no means difficult. Come on, Belle, and say
_siriem_.” Belle hesitated. “Pray oblige me, Belle, by saying
_siriem_!” Belle still appeared to hesitate. “You must admit, Belle,
that it is much softer than _hntam_.” “It is so,” said Belle; “and to
oblige you I will say _siriem_.” “Very well indeed, Belle,” said I. “No
_vartabied_, or doctor, could have pronounced it better; and now, to show
you how verbs act upon pronouns in Armenian, I will say _siriem zkiez_.
Please to repeat _siriem zkiez_!” “_Siriem zkiez_!” said Belle; “that
last word is very hard to say.” “Sorry that you think so, Belle,” said
I. “Now please to say _siriá zis_.” Belle did so. “Exceedingly well,”
said I. “Now say, _yerani thè sirèir zis_.” “_Yerani thè sirèir zis_,”
said Belle. “Capital!” said I; “you have now said, I love you—love
me—ah! would that you would love me!”
“And I have said all these things?” said Belle. “Yes,” said I; “you have
said them in Armenian.” “I would have said them in no language that I
understood,” said Belle; “and it was very wrong of you to take advantage
of my ignorance, and make me say such things.” “Why so?” said I; “if you
said them, I said them too.” “You did so,” said Belle; “but I believe
you were merely bantering and jeering.” “As I told you before, Belle,”
said I, “the chief difficulty which I find in teaching you Armenian
proceeds from your persisting in applying to yourself and me every
example I give.” “Then you meant nothing after all,” said Belle, raising
her voice. “Let us proceed,” said I; “_sirietsi_, I loved.” “You never
loved any one but yourself,” said Belle; “and what’s more—”
“_Sirietsits_, I will love,” said I; “_siriestsies_, thou wilt love.”
“Never one so thoroughly heartless,” said Belle. “I tell you what,
Belle, you are becoming intolerable, but we will change the verb; or
rather I will now proceed to tell you here, that some of the Armenian
conjugations have their anomalies; one species of these I wish to bring
before your notice. As old Villotte says—from whose work I first
contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian—‘_Est verborum
transitivorum_, _quorum infinitivus_—’ but I forgot, you don’t understand
Latin. He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is
in _outsaniel_; the preterite in _outsi_; the imperative in _oue_; for
example—_parghatsoutsaniem_, I irritate—”
“You do, you do,” said Belle; “and it will be better for both of us, if
you leave off doing so.”
“You would hardly believe, Belle,” said I, “that the Armenian is in some
respects closely connected with the Irish, but so it is; for example,
that word _parghatsoutsaniem_ is evidently derived from the same root as
_feargaim_, which, in Irish, is as much as to say I vex.”
“You do, indeed,” said Belle, sobbing.
“But how do you account for it?”
“O man, man!” said Belle, bursting into tears, “for what purpose do you
ask a poor ignorant girl such a question, unless it be to vex and
irritate her? If you wish to display your learning, do so to the wise
and instructed, and not to me, who can scarcely read or write. Oh, leave
off your nonsense; yet I know you will not do so, for it is the breath of
your nostrils! I could have wished we should have parted in kindness,
but you will not permit it. I have deserved better at your hands than
such treatment. The whole time we have kept company together in this
place, I have scarcely had one kind word from you, but the strangest—”
and here the voice of Belle was drowned in her sobs.
“I am sorry to see you take on so, dear Belle,” said I. “I really have
given you no cause to be so unhappy; surely teaching you a little
Armenian was a very innocent kind of diversion.”
“Yes, but you went on so long, and in such a strange way, and made me
repeat such strange examples, as you call them, that I could not bear
it.”
“Why, to tell you the truth, Belle, it’s my way; and I have dealt with
you just as I would with—”
“A hard-mouthed jade,” said Belle, “and you practising your
horse-witchery upon her. I have been of an unsubdued spirit, I
acknowledge, but I was always kind to you; and if you have made me cry,
it’s a poor thing to boast of.”
“Boast of!” said I; “a pretty thing indeed to boast of; I had no idea of
making you cry. Come, I beg your pardon; what more can I do? Come,
cheer up, Belle. You were talking of parting; don’t let us part, but
depart, and that together.”
“Our ways lie different,” said Belle.
“I don’t see why they should,” said I. “Come, let us be off to America
together.”
“To America together?” said Belle, looking full at me.
“Yes,” said I; “where we will settle down in some forest, and conjugate
the verb _siriel_ conjugally.”
“Conjugally?” said Belle.
“Yes,” said I; “as man and wife in America, _air yew ghin_”.
“You are jesting, as usual,” said Belle.
“Not I, indeed. Come, Belle, make up your mind, and let us be off to
America; and leave priests, humbug, learning and languages behind us.”
“I don’t think you are jesting,” said Belle; “but I can hardly entertain
your offers; however, young man, I thank you.”
“You had better make up your mind, at once,” said I, “and let us be off.
I shan’t make a bad husband, I assure you. Perhaps you think I am not
worthy of you? To convince you, Belle, that I am, I am ready to try a
fall with you this moment upon the grass. Brynhilda, the valkyrie, swore
that no one should marry her who could not fling her down. Perhaps you
have done the same. The man who eventually married her, got a friend of
his, who was called Sigurd, the serpent-killer, to wrestle with her,
disguising him in his own armour. Sigurd flung her down, and won her for
his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar
deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle,
and I will do my best to fling you down.”
“I require no such thing of you, or anybody,” said Belle; “you are
beginning to look rather wild.”
“I every now and then do,” said I; “come, Belle, what do you say?”
“I will say nothing at present on the subject,” said Belle; “I must have
time to consider.”
“Just as you please,” said I; “to-morrow I go to a fair with Mr.
Petulengro, perhaps you will consider whilst I am away. Come, Belle, let
us have some more tea. I wonder whether we shall be able to procure tea
as good as this in the American forest.”