monsieur le fils, the master's son

20. c’est que M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade . . . , M. Alphonse . . . was the one who . . .

NOTES l6l

21. qui faisait sa partie, who played with him. — Voilà qui était beau à voir, comme It was a fine sight, the way . . .

25. M. de Peyrehorade. Note the discreet but biting satire of the description the Parisian Mérimée gives of the provincial and his family. Mérimée stresses their excessive hospitality, their exaggerated respect for Parisians, cloaking jealous dislike, their display of second-rate learning, their absurd local pride, etc. Select passages illustrating these various points. — In the illustration of the Rue du Comte (page 98), the house in the rear is said to be the one in which Mérimée stayed in Ille. According to tradition, it was the model for the house of M. de Peyrehorade. A hundred years ago it was not surrounded by other buildings but stood entirely free, and from it one could see a jeu de paume.

30. tirer le Roussillon de l’obscurité où le laissait l’indifférence des savants, rescue Roussillon from the obscurity in which the indifference of the learned had allowed it to remain.

Page 99. — 17. que je ne me trouvasse bien mal à Hie, that

I should be very uncomfortable in Ille.

20. ne bougeait non plus qu’un terme, a quotation from La Fontaine, Fables, IX, 19. Formerly pas was omitted with bouger.

Page 100. — 13. depuis le cèdre . . . hysope. Cf. I Kings, IV, 33: “ And he (King Solomon) spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. See note to page 5, line 22.