Le monstre, presumably the King, Louis XVI
Page 106. — 3. commerce des grains. The grain-trade was a burning question before the Revolution. In 1775, violent and widespread riots had been caused by a slight increase in the price of bread.
II. 1768; a slip on the part of the author or a misprint in the Paris editions.
16. Hipparque. Harmodius and his friend Aristogiton slew the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 b.c. They were revered as the deliverers of Athens. — Tarquins. According to tradition, the tyrant Tarquin was deposed and banished from Rome 510 b.c.
NOTES
31. Condorcet, statesman and philosopher of liberal tendencies. Proscribed during the Terror, he poisoned himself in
Page 107. — 6. dauphin, the little son of Louis XVI, who perished during the Revolution.
27. Palais Royal, built by Cardinal Richelieu and bequeathed by him to the Crown in 1642. At this time it was the property of the Due d’Orléans, and a center of revolutionary propaganda. The garden is surrounded with shops.
28-29. due d’Orléans, Philippe, Duke of Orleans, called “Philippe Égalité” from his habit of catering for popularity with the people. Although of royal blood, he voted for the death of Louis XVI when the king was on trial. Later he was guillotined himself.
Page 108. — 14. anglaise. At this period English influence was strong in France, owing to admiration of English freedom as contrasted to the theoretical despotism of the French monarchy.
19. l’Assemblée . . . Ordres. In 1789, for the first time in a hundred and seventy-five years, the States General, a national legislative body, were called together. After stormy sessions, the delegates of the Third Estate, the people, constituted themselves into a National Assembly and invited the other two orders, the nobility and the clergy, to join them. Voting was to be by individuals, and no longer by “orders,” so that the delegates of the people had a majority. It was the beginning of the end of the monarchy.
20. Necker. The king’s dismissal of Necker, the liberal and enlightened minister of finance, July ii, caused widespread indignation and consternation.
20-21. Ils . . . conquise. This was the general belief at the beginning of the Revolution, which was destined to be so bloody and to sink into the despotism of Napoleon.
32. la raison. Belief in the power of reason to solve all the problems of humanity was widespread in the last half of the eighteenth cent”ry.
NOTES
Page 109. — 9. fontaine de Jouvence, the mythical youthgiving spring for which Ponce de Leôn hunted vainly in Florida and elsewhere.
Page 110. — 1-5. Nous . . . amis. Sentimentality, based largely on Rousseau’s doctrine of the essential goodness of man, was much in vogue.
2. salon; salon (or salle) de verdure, a space enclosed by trees with branches bending inward.
20. monde mystérieux. Anatole France was profoundly interested in the mystery of the universe that surrounds us, and more than once referred to the possible existence of spirits.
28. Les Idylles de Gessner. The quotation is from the end of the prose-idyll Der Wunsch (‘The Wish’), by Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), a sentimental Swiss writer then much in vogue.
Page 111. — 7. Océan, where her husband had perished.
15-16. Vive ... le roi. For a long time hope was cherished that France might enjoy freedom under a constitutional monarch, but the vacillation and stupidity of Louis XVI made this impossible.
LA FÊE
This story is taken from Le crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Anatole France’s first masterpiece. It relates the experience of the old scholar while trying to work in a library one sultry evening. It illustrates delightfully the author’s graceful imagination, that quality which he declares “sows all beauty and all virtue in the world.”
Page 112. — 17-22. J’avais ... impérieusement. To the old medieval specialist, this trivial fact seems of importance because it is in line with his work. The passage is a good example of Anatole France’s irony, here very gentle.
