Beyond Sindh

I've admired for years the terse communication General Sir Charles James Napier reputedly sent to his superiors after gaining control of Sindh Province in the 1840s: Peccavi ("I have sinned" in Latin).

Here's an exchange in the same spirit that I came across today in More French Leaves by Christopher Campbell-Howes, another of the many narratives of expat experiences in France that I read when I should be memorizing French verb tables. A little googling turned up an online account that I'll paste in here. It's Voltaire's response that's particularly clever.

http://andreaskluth.org/2008/11/23/wit-voltaire-and-frederick-the-great/

Wit: Voltaire and Frederick the Great

November 23, 2008

by Andreas Kluth

Voltaire

Frederick the Great

Voltaire and Frederick the Great were friends and conversed in French, as all European aristocrats did at the time. And they were witty.

One day, Frederick invited Voltaire to come join him at his castle, Sanssouci, in Potsdam, by writing the following note:

_p__ à _ci__
venez sans

Voltaire did not miss a beat and replied with his own note:

G a

And they both began to look forward to their next meeting!

Solution:

Voltaire immediately understood Frederick’s note to mean “venez souper à Sanssouci“–ie, come dine at Sanssouci. The word venez is “sous” (under) the letter p. The word sans is “sous” the word ci.

So he replied by saying J’ai grand appétit: Capital G = “Gé grand”; lower-case a = “a petit”.