The effect of the movement was that I had to throw up whatever was on my stomach.

My travelling companions thought me bad company, but they did not say so.

I was in France and among Frenchmen, who know what politeness is.

They only remarked that very likely I had eaten too much at my supper, and a Parisian abbe, in order to excuse me, observed that my stomach was weak.
A discussion arose.
"Gentlemen," I said, in my vexation, and rather angrily, "you are all wrong, for my stomach is excellent, and I have not had any supper." Thereupon an elderly man told me, with a voice full of sweetness, that I ought not to say that the gentlemen were wrong, though I might say that they were not right, thus imitating Cicero, who, instead of declaring to the Romans that Catilina and the other conspirators were dead, only said that they had lived.
"Is it not the same thing ?" "I beg your pardon, sir, one way of speaking is polite, the other is not." And after treating me to a long dissection on politeness, he concluded by saying, with a smile, "I suppose you are an Italian ?" "Yes, I am, but would you oblige me by telling me how you have found it out ?" "Oh! I guessed it from the attention with which you have listened to my long prattle." Everybody laughed, and, I, much pleased with his eccentricity, began to coax him.

He was the tutor of a young boy of twelve or thirteen years who was seated near him.