actuellement = au moment où je parle

1. 32. C'est bien la peine, in an ironical sensé for 'cela ne vaut pas la peine de . . .' ; cela n'en vaut pas la peine.

Page 92. 1. 8. l'étendue, ' space ' ; for a différent use see Microméijas, p. 98, 1. 10.

I. 14. terraqué, composé de ten-e et d'eau ; ' terraqueous,' as in Wordsworth : —

The grand terraqueous spectacle From centre to circumforence.

i:i8 MEMNOX

Petites-Maisons, a lunatic asylum ; especially iised of ono in Paris now demolislied.

1. 19. tout est bien. The tlieorios of the German philosopher Leibniz were in the air wlien this was written. The much-quoted dictuin, 'Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possible,' is an epigrammatic summary of them, or, as Pope has expressed it, ' Whatever is, is right.' The Essay on Man, which was published some fifteen years before Mernnon, was much admired by Voltaire.

Page 93. 1. 2. Sirius : the Dog Star, the brightest of the fixed stars. The existence of planets revolving about it waa assumed by analogy from its irregular movements ; no discovery of the kind was made till 1862.

1. 4. fourmilière, in conii^arison with Sirius, which seems to liave been estimated then at thirteen million times the size of the Earth, very much below the volume now attributed to it. But Voltaire always emphasizes the smallness of the Earth ; cf. Zadig, p. 83, 1. 15.

1. 5. Micromégas : a compound of the Greek ynKpôi, ' small,' and ixîyas, ' great.'

1. 7. The pas géométrique, consisting of five standard feet, called in 1. 13 -pieds de roi, measured 1-62 mètres, nearly 64 inches.

1. 9. Quelques géomètres. Another reading gives algébristes. Thèse calculations are of course a jest, like the assumption of physical conditions in Sirius similar to those of the Earth. Voltaire's reckoning was apparently this : with a volume thirteen million times as great, lineal measure would be about 240 times as great, say ' 24,000 times ' ; the circumference would be 240 times 9,000 leagues, say ' 2,400 times the square of 9,000 '.

1. 14. cinq pieds. Cf. La Bruyère, 'Petits hommes hauts de six pieds, tout au plus de sept.' — Des Jugements.

1. 21. en une demi-heure. The independent authority of the nobles under the Holy Roman Empire and the growth of important towns during the later Middle Ages gave rise to a large number of very small States both in Germany and Italy. Most of them hâve been absorbed into larger monarchies within the last hundi-ed years, but the Republic of San Marino still exista between the Apennines and the Adriatic with an area of about twenty-two square miles. Macaulay speaks of a ' Margrave who could see his whole principality from the cracked Windows of the mean and ruinous old house which he called his palace.' — History, c. xix.