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Updated: June 21, 2025
Possibly this change may have been due to Lord Russell's remonstrances, but the private secretary would have felt his education in politics more complete had he ever finally made up his mind whether Palmerston was more angry with General Butler, or more annoyed at himself, for committing what was in both cases an unpardonable betise.
I am looking him full in the face as I say this, and I see a curious, and to me puzzling, expression of inquiry and laughter in the shady darkness of his eyes. "Has the time seemed so long to you, then?" "No," reply I, reddening with vexation at my own bêtise; "that is yes because we have been to so many places, and seen so many things any one would understand that." "And when do you go home?"
While they talk of the 'betise allemande, they talk of the 'gaucherie anglaise; while they talk of the 'Allemand balourd, they talk of the 'Anglais empetre; while they call the German 'niais, they call the Englishman 'melancolique. The difference between the epithets balourd and empetre exactly gives the difference in character I wish to seize; balourd means heavy and dull, empetre means hampered and embarrassed.
He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the four-funnelled, twin-screwed Parana but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory? "But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There would be difficulties.
Colonel Pompley sneaked back through the shrubbery, hiding himself amongst the trees. "Ill-luck is a betise," said the great Cardinal Richelieu; and in the long run, I fear, his Eminence was right. If you could drop Dick Avenel and Mr.
She had the true Englishwoman's feeling when among foreigners that they were all there as puppets for her entertainment. "Look, Hector," she said they were cousins "did you ever see such a lovely woman as that one over there among the large party, in the black chiffon dress?" Then Hector committed a bêtise. "Where?" said he, his eyes persistently fixed in another direction.
The actor's talent was essentially a gift, a thing by itself, implanted, instinctive, accidental, equally unconnected with intellect and with virtue Sherringham was completely of that opinion; but it struck him as no bêtise to believe at the same time that intellect leaving virtue for the moment out of the question might be brought into fruitful relation with it.
Stalwart Whig as I am, there was something in the tone of the old gentleman which made me feel a certain majesty in the lost cause. "I am Whig in blood and Whig in principle," I said, "but I have never denied that those Scots who followed the Chevalier were too good to waste on so trumpery a leader." I had no sooner spoken the words than I felt that somehow I had been guilty of a betise.
Blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of their blunders. The psychologists of France and where else are there still psychologists nowadays? have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though... in short, they betray something thereby.
I grew to find a certain grim fascination in deciding in advance exactly which wrong thing he'd select; and I acquired an astonishing skill at the game ... "The worst of it was that his betise wasn't of the too obvious sort. Ladies who met him at picnics thought him intellectual; and even at dinners he passed for clever.
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