Dictation, dictation, dictation!

Dear Spies,

Well, the things people used to get up to for fun ...

In 1857 the French writer Prosper Merrimé was asked to produce a REALLY hard dictation to entertain the French court. And it really was hard!

So hard that the emperor Napoleon III made 75 mistakes, his wife Eugenie made 62 mistakes (she was Spanish after all),the writer Alexandre Dumas made 25 mistakes- and the Austrian ambassador Metternich only made THREE mistakes! (Gold star for him I think.)  If you click on the video, you can hear the dictation read out loud. And underneath the words are written out in French, followed by a translation in English. You will see it is quite a crazy story!

"Pour parler sans ambiguïté, ce dîner à Sainte-Adresse, près du Havre, malgré les effluves embaumés de la mer, malgré les vins de très bons crus, les cuisseaux de veau et les cuissots de chevreuil prodigués par l'amphitryon, fut un vrai guêpier. 
Quelles que soient et quelqu'exiguës qu'aient pu paraître, à côté de la somme due, les arrhes qu'étaient censés avoir données la douairière et le marguillier, il était infâme d'en vouloir pour cela à ces fusiliers jumeaux et mal bâtis et de leur infliger une raclée alors qu'ils ne songeaient qu'à prendre des rafraîchissements avec leurs coreligionnaires. Quoi qu'il en soit, c'est bien à tort que la douairière, par un contresens exorbitant, s'est laissé entraîner à prendre un râteau et qu'elle s'est crue obligée de frapper l'exigeant marguillier sur son omoplate vieillie. Deux alvéoles furent brisés, une dysenterie se déclara, suivie d'une phtisie. — Par saint Martin, quelle hémorragie, s'écria ce bélître ! À cet événement, saisissant son goupillon, ridicule excédent de bagage, il la poursuivit dans l'église tout entière."

"To speak plainly, this dinner at Sainte-Adresse, near the Havre, - despite the balmy scents of the sea, despite the very good vintage wines, the veal thighs and the rump of venison provided by the host - was a real hornet’s nest. 
Whatever may or may not have been the case, in comparison with the money owed, the down payment which the dowager and the church warden were supposed to have given, it was vile to blame it on this pair of puny fusiliers, and to inflict on them a beating when they were thinking of nothing more than taking some refreshments with their coreligionists. Whatever the case may be, it was quite wrong that the dowager, through an outrageous misunderstanding, was led to seize a rake and hit the churchwarden on his elderly shoulder blade. Two lungs were smashed, dysentery broke out, followed by tuberculosis. “By Saint Martin, what a haemorrhage!” exclaimed this good-for-nothing. Upon which, seizing his bottlebrush, a ridiculous and excessive contraption, he chased her through the entire church."

More soon on the subject of dictation, my spies.

Yours, dictatorially, the Word Spy