Chapeaux pourprés, Cardinals' hats

I.38. Promet mon âme aux gouffres dévorants. 'Un prédicateur, dans une des principales églises de Paris, fit une sortie contre moi, après ma condamnation, et dit que la peine qu'on m'infligeait ici-bas n'était rien auprès de celle qui m'attendait en enfer.' (Note by Béranger.)

1. 39. a plumé mon bon ange, 'has plucked my guardian angel'; presumably in order to 'singe' him. A song of Béranger's entitled Mon bon Ange had been incriminated on grounds of public morality.

1. 44. Sans rien payer fut exilé jadis. 'Le dévouement de La Fontaine pour Fouquet le fit exiler en Touraine, avec son cousin Jeannard ; on doit à cet exil les lettres de La Fontaine à sa femme. On y voit que le lieutenant criminel leur fournit de l'argent pour leur voyage. Les temps sont bien changés.' (Note by Béranger.)

L 45. Le fier Louis, i.e. Louis XIV.

1. 47. Monsieur Loyal, the ' huissier ' or sheriff's officer in Molière's Tartufe.

Le Juif errant. (Page 106.)

The legend of the Wandering Jew is not met with in literature before the thirteenth century. According to one version he was a servant of Pilate, by name Cartaphilus, and gave Christ a blow when He was led out of the palace to execution. According to a later version he was a cobbler, named Ahasuerus, who refused Christ permission to sit down and rest when He passed his house, bearing His cross, on the way to Golgotha. Both versions agree in the sentence pronounced by Christ on the offender : ' Thou shalt wander on the earth till I return.' A prey to remorse, he has since wandered from land to land, without being able to find a grave. There are many later versions, according to some of which he is supposed to bring cholera in his train, and the story has been turned to account by numerous poets, novelists, dramatists, and artists (among others Edgar Quinet, Chamisso, A. W. Schlegel, Lenau, H. C. Andersen, and Eugène Sue). Gustave Doré illustrated the story in a series of woodcuts of great originality. He is reported to have appeared at intervals in different countries; in England as late as 1830.