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 (18131883)
From ‘Les Odeurs de Paris’
A
“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.