Of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any
piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus. For 'lambiner,' to dally or
loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek
scholar of the sixteenth century, but accused of sluggish movement and
wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's _Provincial
Letters_ will remember Escobar, the famous casuist of the Jesuits,
whose convenient devices for the relaxation of the moral law have there
been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired, he owes his
introduction into the French language; where 'escobarder' is used in
the sense of to equivocate, and 'escobarderie' of subterfuge or
equivocation. A pale green colour is in French called 'celadon' from a
personage of this name, of a feeble and _fade_ tenderness, who figures
in _Astree_, a popular romance of the seventeenth century. An unpopular
minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to
cut down unnecessary expenses in the State, saw his name transferred to
the slight and thus cheap black outline portrait called a 'silhouette'
(Sismondi, _Hist, des Francais_, vol. xix, pp. 94, 95). In the
'mansarde' roof we are reminded of Mansart, the architect who
introduced it. In 'marivaudage' the name of Marivaux is bound up, who
was noted for the affected euphuism which goes by this name; very much
as the sophist Gorgias gave [Greek: gorgiazein] to the Greek. The point
of contact between the 'fiacre' and St.
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