il ne cédait rien, he did not yield an inch

1. 32. des Scapins de la vieille comédie. Scapin was the name generally given in sixteenth- and seventeenth-centmy farces to cunning servants who succeed in robbing their masters without being discovered. Molière retained the name in his Fourberies de Scapin.

1. 34. côtoyer Vinjnste, to coast, to skirt, i. e. just to keep on the right side of fraud.

Page 25. 1. 3. l'absolution du mécanisme moral, i.e. absolution or remission of sins, justification.

1. 5. le bagne, pénal servitude, lit. the prison in which the convicts are detained.