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It seemed becoming for me to say "Beg pardon and thank you," and he bowed and smiled an "il n'y a pas de quoi," thanked me for a pleasant afternoon an "unusual kind of pleasure," he added, "for a soldier in these times," and went away. It was only when I saw him going that it occurred to me that I ought to have offered him tea but you know the worth of "esprit d'escalier."
The French call "l'esprit d'escalier" the "wit of the staircase" the gift of remembering the good thing you might have said in the drawing-room, just too late, as you go up-stairs. However, two new people generally overcome this moment of embarrassment, and then some simple offer of service, such as, "Can I get you a chair?" "Is that window too cold?"
To discover now, after our downfall, that Germany ought never to have carried on a continental let alone a world policy, would be a pitiful example of esprit d'escalier. It is true that it was our right, and even our duty, by our intellect, our ethics and our greatness, to carry it on; but the weakness of our character on the side of Will was the cause of its failure.
While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some lines addressed to his amorette d'escalier. He heard a timorous knock at his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her there, panting as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless, like a child's. "Monsieur," she breathed, "I come to you in distress. I believe you to be good and true, and I know of no other help.
I have no nerve that's the point! only l'esprit d'escalier to perfection. And she has been trained to this sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never hold my own!" Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation "Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible woman!
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