Spelling

Once there was a young pretty lady named Vali who was married to a rich banker in France. The banker had married her for her beauty, but after a while he hired a teacher to instruct her in simple mathematics, reading, and writing. The teacher was an elderly man and he was a good teacher. After two years of instruction Vali was making excellent progress in her studies, her reading was getting better and her penmanship was very nice . One day the teacher became ill and was unable to work for two weeks and a substitute teacher came to teach Vali at her house. The new teacher was young and handsome and he fell in love with Vali right away. It took several days longer but she fell in love with him too. However, there were many servants in the house and Vali and the handsome teacher were never alone more than a few minutes together and they had to be careful.

The teacher knew his job was temporary and he could not bear the thought of leaving Vali and not even being able to communicate with her. They had no telephones in those days and writing to her was out because the rich banker could read. They could both get in trouble if they said anything personal in writing notes or letters to each other. What if the banker got wind of it? The lovesick teacher decided to make up a code that only he and Vali could understand. One of the French words he decided to change into a code was the word rondevoo which everyone knew meant, "Meet me in the hayloft after your husband goes to sleep, and we will have a good time, my darling." He changed the spelling of rondevoo to "rendezvous" making it a code word and impossible to spell unless you had it memorized. You could not sound it out.

Eventually the handsome teacher taught his code word to many other ladies and finally everybody learned the code spelling of rendezvous except for poor people and the banker. They never did learn it.