'
We passed to the language of conversation.
'There are three words,' said Tocqueville, 'which you have lost, and
which I wonder how you do without,--Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle.
You are forced always to substitute the name. They are so mixed in all
our forms that half of what we say would appear abrupt or blunt without
them.
'Then the _tutoyer_ is a _nuance_ that you want. When husband and wife
are talking together they pass insensibly, twenty times perhaps in an
hour, from the _vous_ to the _tu_. When matters of business or of serious
discussion are introduced, indeed whenever the affections are not
concerned, it is _vous_. With the least _soupcon_ of tenderness the _tu_
returns.'
'Yet,' I said, 'you never use the _tu_ before a third person.'
'Never,' he answered, 'in good company. Among the _bourgeoisie_ always.
It is odd that an aristocratic form, so easily learned, should not have
been adopted by all who pretend to be gentry. I remember being present
when an Englishman and his wife, much accustomed to good French society,
but unacquainted with this _nuance_, were laboriously _tutoyering_ each
other. I relieved them much by assuring them that it was not merely
unnecessary, but objectionable.
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