A Man of Business

DEDICATIONA MAN OF BUSINESSThe 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 description.
Mlle. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her pseudonym
(See La fausse Maitresse.), was one of the earliest parishioners of
that charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, that
lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence of a notary
with a wife somewhat too bi

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