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Updated: May 28, 2025
Connected with the Milesian fables were the Testamentum Porcelli, short jeux d'esprit, generally in the form of comic anecdotes, as a rule licentious, but sometimes harmless, and intended for children. A specimen of the unobjectionable sort is here given. "Testamentum Porcelli. "Incipit testamentum porcelli.
But Sylvia, blushing, shook her head. She certainly had no wish to sit down. "I only came in to look for a friend," she said, hesitatingly; "but my friend is not here." And she was making her way out of the Salle des Jeux, feeling rather disconsolate and disappointed, when suddenly, in the vestibule, she saw Madame Wolsky walking towards her in the company of a middle-aged man.
Not less irritating were the jeux d'esprit with which Canning continued to assail the ministry in the newspaper press. The most famous of these is the couplet: Pitt is to Addington As London is to Paddington.
The short juvenile drolleries of his restless youth are the least defective as works of art; and, being brief and simple jeux d'esprit of a rare order, they are entirely successful and infinitely amusing.
You must play 'a des petits jeux de commerce' in mixed companies; that article is trifling; I shall pay it cheerfully. All the other articles of pocket-money are very inconsiderable at Paris, in comparison of what they are here, the silly custom of giving money wherever one dines or sups, and the expensive importunity of subscriptions, not being yet introduced there.
Often, they are purely abstract; at times, metaphysical 'jeux d'esprit, like the sheet of fourteen 'Different Wagers, which begins: I wager that it is not true that a man who weighs a hundred pounds will weigh more if you kill him. I wager that if there is any difference, he will weigh less. I wager that diamond powder has not sufficient force to kill a man.
These little diversions and jeux de societe can go on anywhere; in an alley in the park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge; at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in the play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front of the conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and chattering, lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian brass band, in the little music pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes.
Guiraut Riquier, the last of the troubadours, provides examples of this new genre: from the fourteenth century it was the only kind of poem admitted by the school of Toulouse and the Jeux Floraux crowned many poems of this nature. These, however, have little in common with classical troubadour poetry except language.
And, all smiling again, he offered me the "Amours d'Heloise et d'Abeilard"; but I made him understand that, at my age, I had no use for love-stories. Still smiling, he proposed me the "Regle des Jeux de la Societe" piquet, bezique, ecarte, whist, dice, draughts, and chess. "Alas!"
There was the Minerva, decreed him at a conference of the elegant, pedantic "Jeux Floraux," which had proclaimed Pierre de Ronsard "Prince of Poets."
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