un nouvel étendard. The tricolour flag

1. 42. mes derniers amours. Liberty, which the old man believes will return with the Republic.

Le Retour dans la Patrie. (Page 45.)

First published in the Minerve of 1 819.

In December, 18 18, in consequence of a large influx of Liberals in the Assembly, Élie Decazes (who became later Due Decazes) took office as Minister of the Interior ; a liberal policy was adopted, and an amnesty granted to many banished persons. It was no doubt the return of these exiles in 181 9 which suggested this song to Béranger.

The speaker is a Frenchman who has spent twenty years abroad, probably in the prairie with the Red Indians.

11. 1-2. le navire à qui. Prose would have 'auquel/ but the use of the pronoun ' lequel ' is, or rather was, forbidden in poetry, except in burlesque style.

1. 35. Dieu te devait, equivalent to Dieu aurait dû te donner.

1. 45. où le sang pétille. The metaphor is open to criticism, blood being hardly comparable with champagne. Had it not been for the sake of the rime, Béranger would no doubt have written ' où le sang bout.'

1. 53. De mes amours dans la prairie. There are three readings of this line :

De mes amours, dans ma patrie

(Wahlen et Cie., Brussels, 1824.)

De mes amours, dans la prairie

(Baudouin, Paris, 1826, in-32 ; Perrotin, 1866, in-8°.)

De mes amours dans la prairie

(Gamier, Paris, in- 18, N.D.)

It is evident that either Wahlen's or Garnier's is right, the punctuation of Baudouin and Perrotin (Béranger's authorized publishers) going against the meaning, which must be (according to Garnier's edition) : ' If, aged and penniless, I must forgo all hopes of love (in France which I am returning to), the memory of my loves in the prairie will remain with me ' ; or (according to Wahlen's edition) : ' In my fatherland the memory of my loves (abroad) will remain with me.' The meaning cannot be : 'In the prairie the memory of my loves will remain with me,' since the wanderer is returning home for good.

Although Fenimore Cooper was hardly known yet, prairie life and prairie loves were very popular themes in the literature of the early years of the nineteenth century, the

fashion having been set by the great success of Chateaubriand's Atala (cf. notes to A Chateaubriand).