I imagine you lounging on some steep mountainside, with those demoiselles all grown too tall and beautiful and proud to think otherwise than with disdain of their elderly commensal who spoke such difficult French when he took walks with them at Vers-chez-les-Blanc.
"The Letters of William James, Vol. II"
William James
So it was impossible not to recognise in our soundless commensal the very finest flower of shyness, the very richest shade of the deprecating blush, that one had perhaps ever encountered; one ended in fact by fairly hanging on the question of whether the perfection of his modesty-for it was all a true welter of modesty, not a grain of it anything stiffer-would beautifully hold out or would give way to comparatively brute pressure from some point of our circle.
"Notes of a Son and Brother"
Henry James
We have heard and seen her grandfather play the "Chant du Triste commensal" to crowded concert-rooms, applauded to the echo by men and women long dead and buried and forgotten!
"Peter Ibbetson"
George Du Maurier