In those cases where the unchanged name cannot be used,—one might say “misused,”—one can get a double meaning by means of familiar slight modifications: “_Why have the French rejected Lohengrin?_” was a question asked some time ago. The answer was, “_On Elsa’s_ (Alsace) _account._” (b) Cases where a double meaning is obtained by using a word which has both a verbal and metaphoric sense furnish an abundant source for the technique of wit. A medical colleague, who was well known for his wit, once said to Arthur Schnitzler, the writer: “_I am not at all surprised that you became a great poet. Your father had already held up the mirror to his contemporaries._” The mirror used by the father of the writer, the famous Dr. Schnitzler, was the laryngoscope. According to the well-known quotation from _Hamlet_ (Act III, Scene 2), the object of the play as well as the writer who creates it is to “hold, as’t were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” (c) Cases of actual double meaning or play on words—the ideal case, as it were, of manifold application. Here no violence is done to the word. It is not torn into syllables. It need not undergo any modifications. It need not exchange its own particular sphere, say as a proper name, for another. Thanks to certain circumstances it can express two meanings just as it stands in the structure of the sentence. Many examples are at our disposal. One of the first royal acts of the last Napoleon was, as is well known, the confiscation of the estates belonging to the House of Orleans. “_C’est le premier vol de l’aigle_” was an excellent play on words current at that time. “Vol” means both flight and theft. Louis XV wished to test the wit of one of his courtiers whose talent in that direction he had heard about. He seized his first opportunity to command the cavalier to concoct a joke at his (the king’s) expense. He wanted to be the “subject” of the witticism. The courtier answered him with the clever _bonmot_, “_Le roi n’est pas sujet._” “Subject” also means “vassal.” (Taken from K. Fischer.)