Mezzofanti laughingly asked in his turn,
“Have you ever tried on a pair of green spectacles?”
“Yes,” replied his companion.
“Well,” said Mezzofanti, “while you wore those spectacles everything was green to your eyes. It is precisely so with me. While I am speaking any language, for instance, Russian, I put on my Russian spectacles, and for the time, they color everything Russian. I see all my ideas in that language alone. If I pass to another language, I have only to change the spectacles, and it is the same for that language also!”
——The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, by C. W. Russell.