Fionnuala’s Reviews > The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress > Status Update
Fionnuala
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PARIS Pourquoi don’t you mettez some savon in your bedchambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit passee you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman…
— Feb 04, 2026 10:12AM
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Fionnuala
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We were approaching the Pillars of Hercules, already the African one was in sight, the Rock of Gibraltar was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn’t have was very voluminous. Even the prophets never once hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the water yet they must have known it was there...
— Feb 01, 2026 10:03AM
Fionnuala
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one moment the bowsprit was taking deadly aim at the sun and the next it was trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and the bow climbing high among the clouds! I was not seasick. If there is one thing that will make a man insufferably self-conceited it is to have his stomach behave itself when all his comrades are seasick
— Feb 01, 2026 04:08AM
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Ulysse
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Feb 04, 2026 10:32AM
That is what we appelle passer un savon!
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This soap story had been going on ever since he landed in Marseille(!)—it was only a matter of time before it frothed into une correction verbale appuyée!
Je get it et tout ces jokes des mots.
Qui fait le grocery shopping chaque jour main se washes seulement une fois per semaine? Un gentle-homme gentil qui ne peut pas trouver any savon.
Ken wrote: "Je get it et tout ces jokes des mots."Wunderbar, Ken!
Alison wrote: "Qui fait le grocery shopping chaque jour main se washes seulement une fois per semaine? Un gentle-homme gentil qui ne peut pas trouver any savon."Tu savonne la planche of ce pauvre gentil gentleman qui knows how to faire le shopping, Alison!
Merveilleux, Fionnuala. If only Twain had written ‘The Awful German Language’ with the same facility!
Aha, mon cher Peter, vielleicht notre Herr Twain was a bit of a Warmduscher when it came to schreiben auf Deutsch aber nicht so timid wann Erbsenzähler das Deutsch auf englisch was required. Ya ya, au fond the German compoundwords und das Verb at the end did nicht our Herr Twain so much like (sans parler de Parenthese)
Fionnuala wrote: "Aha, mon cher Peter, vielleicht notre Herr Twain was a bit of a Warmduscher when it came to schreiben auf Deutsch aber nicht so timid wann Erbsenzähler das Deutsch auf englisch was required. Ya ya,..."Very good, Fionnuala! 🤪
Mark Twain's American tourist's fractured French is Monty Python avant la lettre. Imagine John Cleese as an exasperated British tourist trying to communicate his displeasure with the accommodations to the staff of a French hotel. :0
That's right, Gary. Franglais before there was franglais. And yes, I can just hear John Cleese!
To continue the soap story. In Florence, Twain loses his way one night on the way back to his hotel : "At last, somewhere after one o’clock, I came unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that I was very far from the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted to leave the city, and they sprang up and barred the way with their muskets. I said:“Hotel d’Europe!”
It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at each other and at me, and shook their heads and took me into custody. I said I wanted to go home. They did not understand me. They took me into the guard-house and searched me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a small piece of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity.…
