C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

A Bon-Mot

By Louis Veuillot (1813–1883)

AN ACTRESS had lost her mother, whom she adored. She received from the theatre an order to attend a rehearsal. She wrote a touching letter, requesting a few days to give to her grief. The director, furious, fined her.

“Doesn’t she mean to play,” he said, “while her mother is dead?”

This is what is called a bon-mot. The journal which cites one is called upon to invent it. There are people whose business it is to make bons-mots. They are paid as much as three or four sous a line, and they make some which are not bad. But this director’s bon-mot was not invented, I think, but fell from the true lips of nature.

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