Faut-il . . =S'il faut

19 fï. Béranger's famous song of the "Good Little King of Yvetot," composed after the disastrous campaign of Russia (181 2), apparently was a satire upon the warlike

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ioo NOTES

policy and insatiable ambition of Napoleon I. An old tradition relates that, under the Merovingian dynasty in France, a lord of Yvetot, a small town of Normandy, succeeded in having his domain elevated to a kingdom. His descendants are said to have claimed and exercised this right, which, it would seem, was not contested by their powerful neighbors.

78. — ii ff. In the original edition of Béranger's Chansons, the poem Les Oiseaux has the sub-title: Couplets adressés à M. Arnault, partant pour son exil. Béranger's friend, the poet Arnault, was exiled, on account of his political opinions, by the government of the Bourbons in 1816. The circumstances to which the poem refers, are explained in the following passage of the Chansonnier' s autobiography {Ma Biographie) : En 1816, au mois de janvier, Arnault, banni, quitta la France, et nous le conduisîmes jusqu'au Bourget, qui était pour ainsi dire alors la limite du royaume, le reste étant, de ce côté-là, placé sous V occupation étrangère. Le soir, dans une chambre d'auberge, à table avec un jeune officier de gendarmerie chargé de veiller sur cette frontière, et qui déplorait les malheurs de la patrie, je chantai au pauvre proscrit la chanson des Oiseaux, tristes adieux, suivis d'adieux plus tristes encore.

79. — 17 iï. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, born in 1542, was the daughter of James V., King of Scotland, and Marie de Lorraine, daughter of the Duke of Guise. Her father died a few days after her birth. She was educated, and passed most of her youth, in France, where she was sent by her mother at the age of six years. In 1558, she was married to the dauphin, son of Henry II. Her husband ascended the throne of France as Francis II., in 1559, but died in the following year. The young widow resolved to leave France, and assume the crown of Scotland. She embarked at Calais on August 14, 1561.

80. — 24. De mon sort va changer le cours, poet.,= . .le cours de mon sort va changer.

25 fï. Mary Stuart was disliked by the Scotch people on account of her religion as well as on account of her gay, irregular and guilty life. Her subjects were rigid Calvinist^

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while she remained a Roman Catholic. She had to struggle continually against the religious passions of the Presbyterian clergy and the ambitious plans of the powerful Scotch aristocracy assisted by the intrigues of the Queen of England. Vanquished by her own people, in 1568, she fled to England. Here she was kept a prisoner for eighteen years, and was finally executed, in 1587, by order of her relative, rival, and enemy, Queen Elizabeth.

84. — 13. C'était en Thermidor, à la Conciergerie. The subject of Coppée's poem refers to events preceding the 9th day of Thermidor, lid year of the first French Republic (July 27th, 1794), the day on which Robespierre was overthrown, and which put an end to the most horrible period of the French Revolution, called "The Terror" or "The Reign of Terror." Most of the political prisoners, during the French Revolution, were confined in the Conciergerie (see Vocabulary), before they were carried to the scaffold.