Our French Teacher

"Pour la plupart", Mlle. Boubet insisted, "la langue Francaise est parfaitement simple" .(1)
We could not have more vigorously disagreed.

"En particulier, presque tous les verbes sont reguliers, et les noms sont toujours masculin ou feminine, l'un ou l'autre", she explained.(2)

The she-cow (la vache) and he-dog (le chien), the he-cat (le chat) and she-cat (la chatte) were logical enough, but how on earth was one expected to remember she-pen (la plume), he-pencil (le crayon) or she-table (la table).

Mlle. Boubet did not offer an easy solution to this, but suggested, "If eet end in 'e', eet is probably feminine, otherwise eet is masculine. You seemply 'ave to lairn." “Plupart” was an obvious exception to this rule. This was not an encouraging start.

As though to compensate for our misgivings about her language, Mlle. Boubet herself might easily have been the prototype for the actress Brigitte Bardot. To hold the rapt attention of a class of twelve-year-old boys for fifty minutes was an ability few teachers possessed, but Mlle. Boubet managed it effortlessly. When she pursed her lips to demonstrate the French sound "oooh", as in "vous", leaning slightly forward as she did so and drawing out the sound with her hand, our hearts raced; when she turned to write on the blackboard our eyes traced her every sinuous move.

During written translation exercises, Mlle. Boubet glided around the classroom, ready to help out with troublesome passages, of which, ca va sans dire (3), there were always many. When your turn came, she leaned over your shoulder, her cheek a few inches from yours, her fragrance causing you instant and total eclipse of the brain.

"Ah, Geffrey, 'ow may I 'elp you?", she purred.

Geffrey, reduced to a mumbling idiot, could only stab feebly with his finger at the page before him.

Mlle. Boubet awakened in us feelings to which we could not attach words. Without realizing it, we had fallen in love. She had become our Joan of Arc. Had she needed for any reason to raise a small army of twelve-year-old boys, not one in the class would have failed to volunteer, ready to die for whatever cause she chose.

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1. For the most part, the French language is perfectly simple.


2. In particular, nearly all the verbs are regular, and the nouns are always masculine or feminine, one or the other.

3. It goes without saying.