Thursday, March 3

Right Off The Bat He Goes For The French Whorehouse Ambience

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné:

A sa fille qui «Est-ce vrai, madame, que, dans un dîner, récemment le mot 'foutre' vous ait échappé?»

«Non,» répond-elle, «j'ai dit F et j'ai passé outre.»

from The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman

No, it doesn't translate. And I have barely enough French left to understand it anyway. For the rest of you, the guy who first hipped me to the book had it on his coffee table, and his wife asked him, "If it's the Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, how come it's big and green?" Yes, she was serious. No, she was not purchased mail order. In fact she was a prodigiously intelligent woman with a Yogi-like talent for such moments. Sent to the record store to get a copy of the Pachelbel Kanon, she found she'd forgotten what she came for. "It's something like the Taco Bell Symphony," she told the clerk.

Second post and already I'm doing somebody else's jokes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So she said "f" then passed out? Same thing my french teacher did when she heard me try to parle.