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"It is not common argot," she said. "It has its subtleties. One continually finds somewhere an original idea sometimes even a bon mot, which startles one by its pointedness. As you say, however, it belongs only to the Americans and their remarkable country.
The rascal is a really great writer in his abominable way, but his dialect was that of the lowest resorts, and he lets us see that the copious argot which now puzzles the stranger by its kaleidoscopic changes was just as vivid and changeable in the miserable days of the eleventh Louis.
In his turn he came again to the window, and departed from it after a conversation with the clerk that left the latter in accord with Aunt Fanny Atwater's commiserating adjective, though the clerk's own pity was expressed in argot. "The poor nut!" he explained to his next client.
I was growing irritable, Silvia careworn. Even Huldah showed their influence by acquiring the very latest in slang from them. Once in a while to my amusement I heard Silvia unconsciously adopting the Polydore argot.
"It is the name of the club, and means Heaven only knows what! for Greek or Latin root it has none, and record of it there exists not, unless in the dictionary of Argôt. And yet if you were an old Parisian and had matriculated for the last dozen years at the Bal de l'Opéra, you would know the illustrious Chicard by sight as familiarly as Punch, or Paul Pry, or Pierrot.
It was from the latter that she derived her name, the which, in Parisian argot, at once means everything and nothing, but is chiefly taken to signify complete and magnificent indifference to all things mundane and material: and in the matter of indifference Zut was past-mistress.
There were no jangling horse-car bells nor dust to disturb him, and almost all the other tables were unoccupied. The waiters leaned against these tables and chatted in a French argot; and a cool breeze blew through the plants and billowed the awning, so that, on the whole, Van Bibber was glad he had come.
"She is a very remarkable person eh?" said Henfrey, again defeated. "Remarkable! Oh, yes. She is of the grande monde." "Is that still your argot?" he asked. "Oh no. Mademoiselle Yvonne is a lady. Some say she is the daughter of a rich Englishman. Others say she is just a common adventuress." "The latter is true, I suppose?" "I think not. She has le clou for the eponge d'or."
"This is the most amusing place in Paris," observes he. "Like the Alsatia of old London, it has its own peculiar argot, and its own peculiar privileges. The activity of its commerce is amazing. If you buy a pocket-handkerchief at the first stall you come to, and leave it unprotected in your coat-pocket for five minutes, you may purchase it again at the other end of the alley before you leave.
Yet it is more than doubtful if the lower orders have ever done anything for Mr. KEBLE HOWARD except open his cab-doors and bring his washing home on Saturday night. Otherwise he would not make his East End of London heroine talk an argot of which fifty per cent, is pure East Side Noo York.
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