TRÈS-DISTINGUÉ.
Reading edition
Who would think that this prevailing term in the nomenclature of modern fashionable jargon is as old as the time of Ninon de l’Enclos, for whom it was invented? Love had already taken shelter in her wrinkles,[24] and intrenched himself behind her spectacles; and there was still found about her a charm for which there was no name, which the old triumphed to observe, and the young could neither resist nor define. They at last called it something distingué. In one of her clever letters to St. Evremont, speaking of a young friend he had presented to her, she says:—“J’ai lu devant lui votre lettre, avec des lunettes; mais elles ne me siéent pas mal; j’ai toujours eu la mine grave. S’il est amoureux du mérite qu’on appelle ici distingué, peut-être que votre souhait sera accompli: car tous les jours on vient me consoler de mes pertes par ce beau mot.”[25]