de quatre jours, /<?«r days old

6. mam' selle for mademoiselle. Boniface has the slipshod pronunciation of the uneducated ; he says m^sieu for monsieur, vof for votre, v*là for voilà, etc. The author is not careful to follow this out consistently in the text after indicating it in the first speech. Note that Boniface is characteristically fond of big words (e.g. verbe and cavemier just below) and often makes comical mistakes in their use.

Pagr® 2* — I. serait-ce. The conditional makes the question less direct than the indicative. The same effect is produced in English by using the negative: It isnUa caller 1