JEU D'ESPRIT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Jeu d'esprit

... constitution, it was his lot to witness the death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he had penned the jeu d'esprit just quoted, in which there was, perhaps, as ...

— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... clinked, not caring who should pay; and from supping in the wolves' den, there is but a step to hunting with the pack. And here, as I am on the chapter of his degradation, I shall say all I mean to say about its darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Some charitable critics see no more than a JEU D'ESPRIT, a graceful and trifling exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg (GROSSE MARGOT). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring reality, gross and ghastly, ...

— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson