He had apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged with the cockneyism of the British metropolis.

But his learning had grown rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious.

He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicized by a process of his own, and with native idioms literally translated.

The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader, so that I have ventured to trim and sift it.

Newman only half understood it, but it amused him, and the old man's decent forlornness appealed to his democratic instincts.