troupes royales, the king’s guard

16-17. régiments étrangers, chiefly German and Swiss mercenaries summoned by the king.

20. livre anglais . . . tombeaux, probably Night Thoughts, by Edward Young, published in 1742, a volume of gloomy poems that had great vogue both in England and in France; or Meditations Among the Tombs, by James Hervey (1745-1747).

24. pêcheurs. Fishing is still a favorite sport with the lower classes of Paris, though they rarely catch anything.

28. Versailles, twelve miles west of Paris, where the royal family generally resided until 1792.

Page 103. — 7-18. Ce jardin . . . reposent. The rustic garden and Sophie’s costume are characteristic of the idyllic simplicity — a reaction against previous over-formal etiquette — that was the fashion on the eve of the Revolution.

19. antique. A marked element of the Revolutionary spirit was the admiration and the aping of antiquity, particularly Rome.

NOTES

23-24. comme charmée. Comme usually indicates a comparison between two objects or ideas, both expressed, but frequently — as here — only one element of the comparison is expressed, the other being implied. In such a case, it equals as if, as it were.

30. la chanson, Malhrouk, a popular song supposedly based on the exploits of the famous English general, the Duke of Marlborough. The air, a very old one, is the same as that oi We won’t go home until morning.

Page 104. — ■ 22-23. quelle . . . allée? The admiration of exterior nature, in France, dates chiefly from the works of Rousseau. (See note below.)

Page 106. — I. Contrat social, by Rousseau (1762), sometimes called, “the Bible of the Revolution,” preaches the submission of the individual will to the will of the people.

2. Jean- Jacques, J.-J. Rousseau (1712-1778), probably the greatest French writer of the eighteenth century. His sentimentality and preaching of equality were powerful influences before and during the Revolution.

7. Emile, the title of a work on education (1762) by Rousseau, which extols manual labor, object lessons, and the development of the individual at the expense of society. Book V deals with the education of woman, typified by “Sophie,” after whom our heroine was doubtless named.