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Updated: July 10, 2025
Talleyrand was a frequent guest of the Marquis's. His bon-mots used to keep the table in a roar. Ney frequently took his chop with us; Murat, when in town, constantly dropt in for a cup of tea and friendly round game. Alas! who would have thought those two gallant heads would be so soon laid low?
The foundation of the Salic Law was not any sentimental anxiety to guard female delicacy and domesticity; it was, as stated by Froissart, a blunt, hearty contempt: "The kingdom of France being too noble to be ruled by a woman." In harmony with this are the various maxims and bon-mots of eminent men, in respect to women.
As to my early bon-mots, my crying for holidays, my walks to school through showers of cats and dogs, I have left all those for the "Life of the late Right Honourable Thomas Babington Macaulay, with large extracts from his correspondence, in two volumes, by the Very Rev.
The conversation having turned on Bon-Mots, be quoted, from one of the Ana, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your Majesty pleases. He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on the shoulders of the mob, -Numerisque fertur Lege solutus,
Jokes, bon-mots, or the little pleasantries of one company, will not often bear to be told in another; they are frequently local, and take their rise from certain circumstances; a second company may not be acquainted with these circumstances, and of course your story may not be understood, or want explaining; and if, after you have prefaced it with, "I will tell you a good thing," the sting should not be immediately perceived, you will appear exceedingly ridiculous, and wish you had not told it.
Prince's answer wanting. "Likely enough my company does not suit you: I have no French manners, and cannot bring out BON-MOTS in the PETIT-MAITRE way; and truly regard all that as a thing to be flung to the dogs. I am a German Prince, and mean to live and die in that character.
Some bad anecdotes of the preceding reigns, some Russians who have contracted debts with the Parisian shopkeepers, and some bon-mots of Diderot, have put it into the heads of the French, that Russia consisted only of a corrupt court, military chamberlains, and a people of slaves. This is a great mistake.
As the cart drew away a few carrier pigeons, which were released from the galleries, flew off City-ward to bear the tidings to Newgate. Perhaps as good a description of the actual event as can be obtained is contained in a letter from Anthony Storer to his friend George Selwyn, a morbid cynic whose cruel and tasteless bon-mots were hailed as wit by Horace Walpole and his cronies.
Graceful sallies, witty bon-mots tipped with the pungent sparkle of satire, gay stories well and briskly told, all came easily from her lips, so that though I knew her so well, she almost surprised me by her variety and fluency.
The number of Sophie Arnould's bon-mots is almost legion, and her good nature could rarely resist the temptation of uttering a brilliant epigram or a pungent repartee. Some one showed her a snuff-box, on which were portraits of Sully and the Duke de Choiseul. She said with a wicked smile, "Debit and credit." A Capuchin monk was reported to have been eaten by wolves.
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