title: Say Chic: A Collection of French Words We Can't Live Without
author: Francoise Blanchard
description: <b>Fraoise Blanchard</b> is a well-traveled French woman who spent several years in the United States, where she met coauthor Jeremy Leven. After three years of collaboration, primarily on film projects, she returned home to Paris to write. She now lives in Seoul, Korea, with husband, Jung-Soon Choi.
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  # A Man of Business
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Honore de Balzac
  
  
  ##### Translated by Clara Bell and others
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2000 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  
  DEDICATION
  
  
  
  
  
  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