Library / Literature & Fiction
A Man of Business
- Pages
- about 28
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 31 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
To Monsieur le Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and
Austrian Consul-General at Paris.
The word lorette is a euphemism invented to describe the status of a
personage, or a personage of a status, of which it is awkward to
speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, having omitted to supply a
definition out of regard for the age of its forty members. Whenever a
new word comes to supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its
fortune is assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of
every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never gain
an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived beyond a doubt
from the agglomeration of such swallows’ nests about the Church of
Our Lady of Loretto. This information is for etymoligists only. Those
gentlemen would not be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had
only taken such pains with details of contemporary manners as we take in
these days of analysis and description.
Mlle. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her pseudonym (See
La fausse Maitresse.), was one of the earliest parishioners of
that charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, that
lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence of a notary with
a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid for domestic happiness.
Now, it so fell out that one Carnival evening Maitre Cardot was
entertaining guests at Mlle. Turquet’s house--Desroches the attorney,
Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journalist, Nathan, and others;
it is quite unnecessary to give any further description of these
personages, all bearers of illustrious names in the Comedie Humaine.
Young La Palferine, in spite of his title of Count and his great
descent, which, alas! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had
honored the notary’s little establishment with his presence.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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