A MAN OF BUSINESS
by Honore de Balzac



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...