Appendix: Versailles
This one I have as pure hearsay, and it may well be apocryphal, but it’s ’way too funny to leave out. It was going the rounds, surreptitiously, while we were there. I have tried to bounce it and a good deal else off my esteemed friend Mitt Romney, but he’s awfully busy these days, running for president. Maybe if he or one of his handlers happens to see this on the Web (I’m guessing they google him daily, as a matter of routine), he may find time to comment.

Seems it was 1967, or maybe early 1968, and Mitt’s dad, Governor George Romney of Michigan, was running for president. Yes, it runs in the family. He was short on international experience, and so his advisors set up a world tour for him and for Mitt’s mom, Lenore. At that time, President Pappy had assigned Elder Mitt to the Versailles District, and so it was pretty much fated that the three Romneys would share some sort of public appearance, when George and Lenore came through town.

The mayor of Versailles1 was delighted to set up something like a rally on pavés of the palace courtyard. George and Lenore occupied chairs on the dais, with Mitt between them to translate: they had no serviceable French.

Have you ever listened to a speech by an educated, tipsy Frenchman? It’s a marvelous phenomenon. The longer the Mayor spoke, the longer his elegant sentences became, to the point that Elder Mitt’s missionary French had some difficulty keeping up with it. After rather too many resonant sentences, the Mayor finally got around to introducing the distinguished guest, whom he addressed as follows:
“Et pour ce qui est de votre candidature à la présidence des États-Unis, tout ce que je puis dire, c’est: Merde!”2
Now, the slang expression, “Merde” means, literally, “Sh--.”3 But the correct, idiomatic translation, in this context, would have been “Break a leg!” as one would say hereabouts to a performer to wish him luck, inasmuch as it’s conventionally bad luck to wish a performer good luck. Same deal in French, but Mitt hadn’t encountered the idiom.

His parents nearly fell off their chairs.
1I was slightly acquainted with this Mayor, although I’ve forgotten his name, along with so much else. Back in 1963, he had presided at the vernissage [a curious usage, no?] of an exhibition of paintings by our beloved Esmé, and I had attended to cover it for l’Étoile. I seem to recall that he was sober enough to manage the ribbon-cutting without notable contretemps.
2“And as for your candidacy for the presidency of the United States, all I can say is…”
3I detest bowdlerization and euphemism with my whole soul, but this text may at some point need to go through e-mail. And a lot of people’s mail client software would surely construe it as obscene and divert it to some e-purgatory.
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