Read "Lavengro" by George Borrow online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
So I studied French and Italian under the tuition of the banished priest, to whose house I went regularly every evening to receive instruction. I made considerable progress in the acquisition of the two languages. I found the French by far the most difficult, chiefly on account of the accent, which my master himself possessed in no great purity, being a Norman by birth. The Italian was my favourite.
"Vous serez un jour un grand philologue, mon cher," said the old man, on our arriving at the conclusion of Dante's Hell.