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[precocioustilda]

And lo, a Matilda appears. Her nose is in a book as she wanders down the stairs, yet she successfully manages to navigate the bar and plunk herself down in a seat by the fire, still reading. Feel free to interrupt. Despite appearances, she's feeling sociable.

Comments

[balletrat]

*From a nearby armchair, Meg watches the small girl make her way through the bar, and finds herself rather impressed.

Avoiding that many chairs and tables takes skill.*

[balletrat]

*Meg laughs.*

That works too.

So who is you?

[precocioustilda]

"...Matilda. Matilda Wormwood."

Cute grins!

"And who's you?"

[balletrat]

Meg, *Meg says, with an answering smile.*

Marguerite Giry, specifically, but Meg generally - and I've not met any other Megs here yet, so specifics probably aren't very important.

[precocioustilda]

"Marguerite is a pretty name."

"...Wait, Meg Giry? Do you teach French, by any chance? Somebody told me about you. I like learning languages."

[OOC: I have to go. Suddenly. To buy cardboard boxes. Slowtime/fade/whatever?]

[balletrat]

*Meg brightens.*

I do, actually - French and dance, in the House of Arch, though it's on vacation by now - are you interested in learning?

[OOC: Whichever! *flexible like spaghetti* Thanks for the thread! :D]

[precocioustilda]

[OOC: Thread spaghetti! I am amused!]

"Yes. I'm always interested in learning." The Face of Academic Glee shows itself.

[balletrat]

[OOC: *curtseys* I aim to please! Pasta-ishly!]

*Meg beams back, with the Face of Nationalist Glee.*

Well, I'm always interested in teaching, what I know at least - there are far too few people here who speak French.

[precocioustilda]

[OOC: Your pasta is pleasing. ^_^]

The Face of Academic Glee is still around, oh yes.

"And I love learning new languages especially. I bet there's some wonderful literature in French. Maybe I can track down the original writings that Sir Thomas Malory based his book on."

[balletrat]

- those are the Arthur stories, right?

*Meg tilts her head; she's not classically educated, by any means, but she's spent enough time around Mordred to pick up a few things.*

That'd be Middle French, probably, which is a little different from modern, but there's lots that was written around my time - Victor Hugo, and Dumas pere et fils -

[precocioustilda]

The mun never thought she'd be in a position where she knew more than her pup. Poor, French-ignorant Matilda.

"Yes, those are the Arthur stories. And I didn't have much trouble understanding Middle English given my knowledge of English, so I'm sure Middle French won't be that much more difficult to master."

A blink.

"What's pere et fils mean?"

At least she picks up pronunciation quickly.

"

[balletrat]

Father and son, *Meg explains, cheerfully.*

See - there's your first bit of French already. Pere is father, and fils is son - they both wrote. Though the father wrote a good deal more than his son did.

[precocioustilda]

"Oh."

This next question should come as no surprise to anyone who knows Matilda.

"How do you spell it?"

She produces a notebook.

"And are the Dumas-es any good as writers?"

[balletrat]

Pere - p-e-r-e, accent grave over the first e, *Meg rattles off.*

Fils - f-i-l-s. No accents. And I kind of like them - Dumas pere, especially, he's the one that wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Some of the others are sort of written too fast, but those two are some of his best, though he's not quite as good as Victor Hugo, I think -

[precocioustilda]

Matilda dutifully scribbles these down, along with translations.

"Victor Hugo? I've heard of him, I think. What sorts of things did he write?"

[balletrat]

*Meg looks at the notepad approvingly; she's been teaching long enough by this point not to be unnerved by the idea that her words are being taken down for later consideration.*

Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Miserables, among others - the one is about Quasimodo who was the bell-ringer at Notre-Dame Cathedral, and the other one is about one of the French mini-revolutions. And also there's babies switched at birth and escaped convicts and so on all in there too.