fustigés, 'whipped away

1. 15. y ai mis ma montre engage. 'C'était au commencement de 1804 . . . Depuis longtemps la montre d'or et quelques autres débris de notre passagère opulence servaient d'hypothèque au Mont-de-Piété ; ma garde-robe se composait de trois mauvaises chemises qu'une amie se fatiguait à raccommoder, d'une mince redingote bien râpée, d'un pantalon percé au genou et d'une paire de bottes qui faisait mon désespoir, parce qu'en les décrottant chaque matin j'y découvrais toujours quelque blessure nouvelle.'

1. 28. A Marengo Bonaparte est 'vainqueur! The Austrians under Mêlas were defeated at Marengo, in Lombardy, by Bonaparte, then First Consul, on June 14, 1800. In these early days of Napoleon's fame the people had not yet grown tired of celebrating his successes, and when the guns of the Hôtel des Invalides announced some new victory the excitement in the streets of Paris knew no bounds.

1. 29. un autre chant commence, ' we sing the Marseillaise,' or some other of the many 'hymnes patriotiques' of the time.

1. 31. Les rois jamais n envahiront la France. Understand: ' So we thought in 1800.'

Le Sacre de Charles le Simple. (Page 89.)

This song, written in 1825 at the time of the coronation of Charles X, is given here not for its literary merit — it is crude and gross, and lacking in those witty ' sous-entendus ' which give piquancy to most of Béranger's satires — but because it was the first and chief cause of the poet's condemnation in 1828. The virulence of this attack on the King is probably to be accounted for as suggested in the note to 1. 49. The pretended reference to Charles 'the Simple,' or 'the Fool,' was intended only to give to the song the additional offensiveness of an offensive title.

Charles III (lived 879-929), called 'le Simple,' probably by his nobles, with whom he was constantly at war, but who seems to have been no fool, was the posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer. It was he who, instead of paying constant tribute to the piratical Northmen, settled them in Neustria, thence-

forth known as Normandy, and gave their chief Rollo his daughter Gisèle in marriage.

1. 1. que Reims a réunis. Charles X was solemnly crowned at Reims on May 29, 1825, with all the ancient ceremonial.

1. 2. Montjoie et saint Denis! In the Middle Ages a 'montjoie ' was a small cairn raised to indicate the way. The name 1 Montjoie Saint-Denis ' was given to the hill near Paris where St. Denis suffered martyrdom. The French early took these words for their war-cry, and they came to be used also to express loyalty to the king.

1. 3. On a refait la sainte ampoule. The ' Sainte Ampoule ' was a phial containing the sacred oil with which the French Kings were anointed until the Revolution. It was preserved in the Cathedral of Reims, and was supposed to have been brought to Bishop Remi by an angel under the shape of a dove, to anoint King Clovis. In 1793 it was smashed to pieces with a hammer on the public square of Reims. A little of the ointment it had contained was mysteriously recovered for the coronation of Charles X, and is still preserved in a new 1 ampoule.'

1. 5. Des passereaux lâchés enfouie. 'Au sacre de Charles X on lâcha dans l'église un grand nombre d'oiseaux qui se précipitèrent dans toutes les parties de la nef.' (Note by Béranger.)

1. 11. aux 'vieux us. Béranger intentionally uses the archaic word for ' usages,' which is now only met with in the expression ' les us et coutumes.'

1. 15. 77 avait couru l'Allemagne. As Charles X had done before 1814.

I. 21. Chamarré de vieux oripeaux, ( Decked out in ancient tawdry.'

II. 25-26. les drapeaux rebelles d'un usurpateur généreux. It was unjust to charge the King's ' faithful entourage ' with having all followed Napoleon's flag. It comprised more ' émigrés ' than ' ralliés.'

1. 27. Un milliard les met en haleine. On March 27, in the teeth of public opinion, the Chamber had voted an indemnity of forty millions sterling for the ' émigrés.' All landed proprietors whose estates had been confiscated during the Revolution were to receive an indemnity equal to twenty years' purchase calculated on the value of their land in 1790. les met en haleine, ' puts them into the right mood.'

1. 31. cousus d'or. May be taken in a double sense, as referring both to the robes of gold cloth worn by the prelates, and to the public money which had recently been entering their pockets.

I. 33. on l'huile. The proper expression is on l'oint, 'they anoint him.' On Phuile is an intentional vulgarism on Béranger's part, which might be rendered by 'they grease him.'

II. 37-38. Rome . . . relhve (fun serment prêté, ' Rome can release any one from his oath.' Béranger gives as a note : ' L'article de la Charte relatif à la liberté des cultes causait, dit-on, une grande répugnance à Charles X, qui, assure-t-on, n'en voulait pas jurer l'observation.1 The meaning is therefore : ' Take the oath in the meantime, Rome can release you from it later.'

1. 49. notre maître a des maitres. It was well known that Charles X was entirely in the hands of the 'parti prêtre' and of the ' Congrégation,' whose pretensions and arrogance had become daily more notorious since his accession. On April 20 they had forced through the Chambers the ' Loi du sacrilège,' which punished with death the burglary of a church or the profanation of a sacred vase or consecrated wafer. The passing of this law was received with amazement by the country. Although it was never put into operation it contributed not a little to the growing estrangement between the people and the Bourbons. To the ' Loi de l'indemnité' mentioned above and the 'Loi du sacrilège' must no doubt be attributed the rancour shown by Béranger in this song.

1. 52. Va guérir tous les scrqfuîeux. In France, as in many other countries, the King was supposed to have the power of healing the ' King's Evil.'

1. 55. Vous pourriez faire un sacrilège. These lines refer of course to the ' Loi du sacrilège ' mentioned above.

Les Infiniment Petits. (Page 91.)

This song, which was incriminated like the preceding one in 1828, reflects faithfully in its ' refrain ' the general lassitude of the people and their longing for a change from the oldworld line of kings which was eternizing itself on the throne. The word ' gérontocratie ' is of course coined from the Greek ytptùv, yepovros, in analogy to ' aristocratie,' and means ' government by old men.' In seventeenth-century French comedy ' Géronte ' occurs frequently as the name of an old man nearly in his dotage.

Louis XVIII had died at the age of 69, and Charles X, born in 1757, would be about the same age when this song was written,

Béranger had no doubt read Gulliver's Travels, translations of which already existed in almost every language, and was certainly acquainted with Voltaire's Micromégas.

1. 1. J'ai foi dans la sorcellerie. This profession of faith must not be taken seriously, although Béranger may have heard in his youth of the miracles and wonders performed in Paris by the celebrated quack Cagliostro, who enjoyed such popularity in the fashionable 'salons ' of the capital until

1. 8. les barbons. A barbon is literally an old bearded man (Italian barbone, a long beard) ; the word is always used with a shade of contempt : —

'Un vieux barbon de père.'

(Molière, V Etourdi, I, 2.)

Between ' barbon ' and { Bourbon ' there was little difference, and no one could mistake the allusion.

1. 18. bilieux. Pronounced here as two syllables only. ( Bilieux ' may be taken to connote both an unhealthy and bilious complexion, and also an irritable temper.

Cf. Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (II, 4) : — 1 Je suis bilieux comme tous les diables.'

1. 20. de petits bons dieux. 'Bons dieux' is here practically a compound noun. The people in France generally refer to God as Me bon Dieu.' When a priest carries the host in a monstrance on procession days as the ' Fête-Dieu,' he is said to ' porter le bon Dieu.' ' Porter le bon Dieu à un mourant ' is to carry the last sacrament to a dying man. To buy a statuette of our Lord would be among the people 1 acheter un petit bon Dieu,' an expression which could be readily used in the plural.

I. 23. un petit séminaire. A ' séminaire' is a college for the education and training of priests. There is one in every diocese. A ' petit séminaire ' is a secondary school intended to prepare youths for entering the ' grand séminaire,' but the meaning here is of course 'a tiny training college for the priesthood,' and not ' a secondary school.'

II. 35-36. un géant hérétique qu'un monde a peine à contenir. Probably a reference to Great Britain.

Couplets sur la Journée de Waterloo. (Page 93.)

Probably written shortly before 1828. Béranger had evidently been asked to write a patriotic song on the battle of Waterloo.

1. 2. des chants. Distinguish between ■ un chant,' a patriotic song showing earnestness and elevation, and ' une chanson,' written in a lighter vein. Rouget de Lisle was greatly angered whenever he heard the Marseillaise called a ' chanson.5 Among the ' chants ' which have already occurred in this collection might be quoted: La Sainte Alliance des Peuples , Le Chant du Cosaque, and Psara.