Levez-vous!

Levez-vous, Monsieur le Chat, vous avez de grandes choses à faire! // Get up, Mr. Cat, you have great things to do!

Today, for no particular reason, I remembered the phrase "Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses à faire!" linked to Henri de Saint-Simon. Specifically, his servant was instructed to use it to wake him up daily.

I was surprised to discover that the phrase is apparently not as well known by the French themselves, let alone by English speakers, as it is by my generation of Russians. There are historical reasons for this, but I won’t enter into them now.

Sometimes, as in my case, the derivative jokes are better remembered than the original phrase itself. For example, I had to google the historical details, but I remembered this joke by Andrey Knyshev perfectly:

Всем известно, что великий французский мыслитель Сен-Симон просил с вечера своего лакея будить его по утрам словами: "ВСТАВАЙТЕ, ГРАФ! ВАС ЖДУТ ВЕЛИКИЕ ДЕЛА!" Однако, мало кто знает, что ответом лакею утром была обычно площадная брань да башмак в голову.

Everyone knows that the great French thinker Saint-Simon used to ask his footman to wake him up in the morning with the words: 'GET UP, COUNT! GREAT THINGS AWAIT YOU!' However, few people know that the answer the footman usually got was foul language and a shoe to the head.

The cat doesn’t have a footman, and I am not entirely sure who the joker behind the door is. The cat, however, is being polite. No shoe is thrown, and the foul language is staying entirely inside his head.