The Da Vinci Code vocabulary

These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde.*

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.

*^{the seven wonders of the world}

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A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du de la is French.

James Joyce. Ulysses

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"Le mieux," says a French proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien,"*** and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound interest until they amounted to seventy-seven.

Edgar Allen Poe. The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazada.

***^{Perfect is the enemy of good} (This was an aphorism popularized by Voltaire)