douce

adj

1. (obsolete)Sweet; nice; pleasant.
2. (dialectal)Serious and quiet; steady, not flighty or casual; sober.

   “The bookseller, douce man, had seen too many eccentric customers to be shocked by the vehemence of his questioner.”

   “what would you say of a man with plenty of silver that bided all by his lone and made his own bed and did his own baking when he might have had a wife to make him douce and brave?”

   “If Fabre, for example, were elected to the Academy tomorrow, you would see his lust for social revolution turning overnight into the most douce and debonair conformity.”

   “So what strong lord of misrule can preside in this douce, commercially respectable, late 19th century city where even religious fanaticism reinforces un adventurous mediocrity?”