n'écrivez pas, l do not enter an office

1. 10. afin de l'user, unintelligible, and a flagrant 'cheville.'

I. 19, son coffre, 'his safe ' ; generally called coffre-fort.

II. 30-31. ce baron, courtier de la Sainte-Alliance. Baron James de Rothschild (1 792-1 868), who established in Paris, during the Restoration, an important banking-house, while three of his brothers founded houses in London, Vienna, and Naples, the eldest assuming control of their father's house, the

2l8 CHANSONS CHOISIES DE BÉRANGER

original firm, in Frankfort. The Rothschild bankers, known to-day all the world over, had been ennobled by the Emperor of Austria in 1815, in recognition of their services to the • Sainte - Alliance.' The title of ■ baron ' was therefore sufficiently recent to make it a subject of sarcasm for Béranger.

1. 34. // l'eut que les Grecs soient déçus. 'On n'osait alors secourir les Grecs, qui faisaient d'héroïques efforts pour recouvrer leur liberté. (Note by Béranger.) Cf. notes to Psara.

I. 35. l'endos de Moise. It is well known that the Rothschilds are Israelites.

II. 45-46. une noble industrie puise à gauche. Cf. note to Halte-là, 11. 33, 34.

Les Sciences. (Page 73.)

1. 7. Gardons Lisette et La Fontaine. Béranger was a great admirer of La Fontaine, with whom he has much in common. Allusions to his fables are frequent in the Chansons, and have already been noticed, and he borrows extensively from La Fontaine's vocabulary (cf. 1. 17).

1. 9. mon Armide. Armide is an enchantress in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. She used her charms to seduce the Crusaders from their vows and duty. Her pleasure-grounds were so splendid that ' the gardens of Armida ' have become synonymous with gorgeous luxury. Armide enslaved Rinaldo, or Renaud, and some of his companions in arms, until her witchery was destroyed by a talisman brought from the Christian army. Lulli, Gluck, Cherubini, Rossini and other musicians have composed operas on this episode.

1. n. un chimiste moins timide. Physics and chemistry were making rapid strides at this time (cf. 1. 29) ; the pioneer in chemistry was Gay-Lussac (1 778-1 850), who, already well known for his early investigations in specific gravities, specific heats, gaseous laws, became later on specially famous in connexion with iodine, cyanogen — which he discovered — alcohols, ethers, alkalies, and the manufacture of sulphuric acid.

1. 17. J'ai regret aux contes de vieille, an archaic turn for fe regrette les contes . . . very seldom used at the present day. Béranger had probably taken it from La Fontaine :

J'ai regret, disait-il, à mon premier^ seigneur.

(La Fontaine : L'Âne et ses Maîtres.)

contes de vieille ; old wives' tales.

NOTES. PAGES 72-75 2IÇ

1. 18. un docteur. Dupuytren (1777-1835), the most famous surgeon of the time, and one of the most popular men in Paris. He was made a baron by Louis XVIII, and was surgeon to Charles X.

1. 22. Les ressorts. The English reader may find an allusion to the springs of a lamp rather obscure in this metaphor; thick vegetable oils being still largely used as illuminants in France, they are burned in the ' lampe Carcel,' in which a clock-work movement actuates a small force-pump to feed the wick, or in the ' lampe à modérateur,' in which the oil ascends through the pressure of a piston actuated by a spiral spring.

1. 31. Je crains que le soleil n abdique. Another 'sun' had abdicated in 18 14.

This little piece, by a man who was in no way connected with the scientific movement of his time, is a proof that science was beginning to engage the attention of the general public, and that an ' intelligent interest ' was being taken in its developments.

Le Tailleur et la Fée. (Page 75.)

Written in 1822. Béranger always invited a few friends to dinner on his birthday ; during the evening he would sing his latest songs.

This short autobiography requires few notes, beyond a general reference to the Introduction for a more circumstantial account of the facts he refers to.

1. 1. Dans ce Paris. Rue Montorgueil, in the 'Halles' quarter.

I. 2. En Van du Christ mil sept cent quatre-t'ingt. Professor Hartmann points out that Béranger is probably the first French poet to dare to give a date in verse. It was soon to become a favourite trick of Victor Hugo's.