A. Sample questions (You may type your answer in the box; your answer will erase when you leave this page, or you may click on the "remettre" button. You may check your answer by scrolling the box.) :
1. Quelque chose de mon émotion transparut sur mon visage. Sherlock sourit finement.
2. Je répondis donc, peut-être un peu précipitamment, que l'amie en question pouvait parfaitement attendre . . . .
3. La preuve indéniable, la preuve irréfutable, expliqua-t-il, que vous sortez bien d'un rendez-vous: vos bottines sont à demi reboutonnées, ou vous avez été surpris en flagrant délit . . . .
B. Translation of the Passage
"By a hair"
I was leaving the arms of Mrs. Sherlock when I ran into, such is my luck, her husband.
"Hey! Hello!," said the eminent detective, "Do you want to have dinner with me? It's been centuries since I've seen you!"
Something of my shock appeared on my face. Sherlock smiled cleverly. "I see what it is," he said, "The gentleman is going to his girlfriend's."
If I were to say "No", I would seem to be hiding something. If I said "Yes", I would seem to want to avoid him. So I answered, perhaps a little quickly, that the girlfriend in question could perfectly well wait; that, if I didn't arrive at eight, it would be at nine, and that, if she were not happy, I would not come home at all.
The only reply Sherlock made was to put his hands on my shoulders, stare at me, and say, "Don't stammer old friend. I had laid a trap for you. You were leaving a rendez-vous!"
A shiver ran through my body and came out my hair, which stood on end.
Fortunately, he added, "But no more joking. Let's go to a restaurant. Sorry not to take you to my place, but I'm not expected. The maid has the day off."
I thought I was saved. My firend was daydreaming over his soup, but I put his daydreaming down to some professional pickpocket or special vagrancy. Suddenly, with his foot he knocked my ankle.
"There's the proof," he said.
It was starting again.
"The undeniable proof, the irrefutable proof," he explained, "that you were coming from a rendez-vous; your shoes are half buttoned; either you were caught in the act, an unallowable hypothesis, for a woman took her time knotting your tie; or your girlfriend belongs to a family where they don't use a buttonhook, an
English family, for instance."
I put on a smile.
"Any woman," I slipped in, "has hairpins. A hairpin readily replaces a buttonhook."
"Your girlfriend doesn't have any," he let fall. "You perhaps are unaware that certain Englishwomen have formed a league against hairpins. Besides, without going so far, women who wear wigs don't use them. I am paid to know. My wife is one of them."
"Ah!" I said.