un couvert bien mis, a well-laid table

1. 11. Courant pour disputer les voix. A candidate to a vacancy in the Académie française must call on every member and personally request his support. This rule has been enforced ever since the Jansenist Arnauld d'Andilly (1589- 1674), having been elected, refused to join the ranks of the honourable company.

1. 1 3. D'un grand seigneur ou d'une belle. The influence of feminine intrigue in academic elections has been a frequent subject of satire in France ; cf. within recent times Le Monde où l'on /ennuie, by Pailleron (1881), and V Immortel, by Alph. Daudet (1888).

1. 14. faisant moitié du chemin. Béranger mentions in his note above that he had in no way sought admission to the Caveau.

1. 23. quelque chose d'aussi fort, something equally brilliant, or clever.

1. 31. Que moi je le 'vaux, Dieu sait comme. This verse and the preceding one, of course, satirize the Discours de reception (' discours superbe et long ') which every newly-elected member must deliver (taking for his subject the 'éloge ' of his predecessor), and the answering speech of welcome by the president.

Dieu sait comme. One of the few expressions in which comme continues to be used in the sense of comment, which it had until the seventeenth century.

Montrez-lui comme il faut régir une province.

(Corneille, Le Cid, I. iv.)

Si vous aviez vu comme j'en fis rencontre.

(Molière, Tartufe, I. v.)

1. 47. Ma chaise n'est point un fauteuil. For a long time the Academicians sat on chairs, but old Cardinal d'Estrées, who was frail and infirm, having asked to be provided with a softer seat, Louis XIV ordered forty armchairs, exactly similar to each other, to be placed in the salle des seances, for he wished the most perfect equality to be observed among the members, whatever their social status outside the precincts of the Académie might be. This was the origin of the fauteuils, which have become the traditional symbol of membership of the Académie.