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Note. — The uses of the French subjunctive discussed in these Notes are tabulated in an Oulline on p. 166 of this book. As each use is taken up here, it is followed by a reference to the Oulline.
Carmen was first published in 1845. It is based on a story which the Countess de Montijo, the mother of the Empress Eugénie of France, told Mérimée.
Page 3.— 1. de ne savoir. Savoir, pouvoir, oser frequently omit pas, especially when followed by an infinitive. As a rule, pas is omitted today only in written French.
3. Munda. Mérimée cherished for a long time the project of writing a life of Julius Cesar, and when he was in Spain in 1840 he gathered materials bearing on Czsar’s Spanish campaigns. Ultimately he gave his notes to Napoleon III, who published a biography of Cesar in 1865-7.
4. quelque, some, about, is today generally treated as an adverb and remains singular before a plural noun.
7. Vexcellente bibliothéque du duc d’Osuna. This library, established in Madrid in 1786, was purchased by the Spanish government in 1884 and its contents divided between the National Library and other institutions. rt. Me trouvant en Andalousie. Mérimée first visited Spain,
including Andalusia, in June—December, 1830.
13. Un mémoire. Mérimée never published such a study; this sentence and the following are full of his characteristic irony.
16. résolve. The subjunctive is used after avant que, en attendant que and jusqu’a ce que, indicating time before which. See Outline, II, C, 5. Notice that this subjunctive, as frequently, is to be rendered by the English infinitive. Sometimes, however, the English present participle replaces the French subjunctive; see note to page 7, line 21.
23. Certain jour, One day. Certain, having much the same meaning as un, is frequently used, especially in older style, without un. The description which follows, the longest in Carmen, is unusually extendetl and detailed for the sober Mérimée, who had little feeling for landscape without human action init. Compare the account of the maquis in Mateo Falcone, page 70.
26. les fils de Pompée. After Czsar’s victory at Pharsalia over Pompey, champion of Roman aristocracy, the latter’s two sons, strategically placed in Spain, were successively vanquished by Cesar and Augustus.
Page 4. — 7. qu’en remontant, i.e. le ruisseau.
12. A peine eus-je fait. A peine is one of various adverbs after which a pronoun used as subject frequently follows the verb; cf. English usage after scarcely, hardly. A peine... que, like ne... pas (or encore, plus tét, sit6t)...que, may take the past anterior tense, as here, when the action is not repeated. See note to page 12, line 9.
