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Updated: July 10, 2025
Groups around the spindle-legged card tables exchange bon-mots and play, while others dance and promenade on the polished floors until the morning light breaks over the river.
Novels, fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behavior and etiquette, collections of bon-mots and of songs, were interspersed with volumes in the old style of calf and gilt binding, the works of the classics of French literature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and of those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to look at these books.
Besides, the princess shared his enjoyment after a while by her conversation, sparkling with wit and humor; she was inexhaustible in telling piquant anecdotes and merry bon-mots; she portrayed her friends and acquaintances in so skilful a manner that the major did not know whether to admire their striking resemblance or the talent with which she rendered their weak traits most conspicuous.
They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and I was amused and astonished. These bon-mots were followed by an account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning Balzac came with the scenario of the first act.
It is certain that even his bon-mots in society were not always to be set down to the credit of the occasion; but that frequently, like skilful priests, he prepared the miracle of the moment before-hand.
It was at this strange and picturesque period, when everything in politics, society, literature, and art was fermenting for the terrible Hecate's brew which the French world was soon to drink to the dregs, that there appeared on the stage one of the most remarkable figures in its history, a woman of great beauty and brilliancy, as well as an artist of unique genius Sophie Arnould. Her name is lustrous in French memoirs for the splendor of her wit and conversational talent; and Arsène Houssaye has thought it worthy to preserve her bon-mots in a volume of table-talk, called "Arnouldiana," which will compare with anything of its kind in the French language. For a dozen years prior to the Revolution Sophie Arnould was a queen of society as well as of art; and in her elegant salon, which was a museum of art curios and bric-
Instead of a single deep, low, earnest voice, alternating with a profound silence, an absolute roar of merriment began, with the suddenness of an explosion of gunpowder. Jests, bon-mots, anecdotes, barbarous plays upon words the more atrocious the better flew round the table; and a joyous and almost continuous ha! ha! ha! made the ceiling ring.
Said a French gentleman to me one evening, "The old idea of l'homme d'esprit of Louis XIV.'s time, the man of bon-mots, bows, and salons, is almost passed away; there is only now and then a specimen of it left. The French are becoming more earnest and more religious." In the Roman Catholic churches which I attended, I saw very full audiences, and great earnestness and solemnity.
A casual occurrence, a little discussion involving, perhaps, a cunning attempt to enlist him on one side or the other, would prove the key to unlock a fund of anecdotes, repartee, bon-mots, and, best of all, word-pictures, for here Dr. Bemiss excelled every one I ever knew.
At Bloomsbury Place, Lady Augusta's "coffee and conversation" became "conversation and coffee," and the conversation came as naturally as the coffee. People who had jokes to make made them, and people who had not were exhilarated by the bon-mots of the rest. "Mollie will be seventeen," said Dolly, "and it is rather a trial to me." Gowan laughed. "Why?" he asked. She shook her head gravely.
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