çîiels ^r^z/^-j, what foibles

1, 13. des trois pouvoirs, the king, the nobility and the tiers état.

1. 14. Quel peuple, àfc. : this was writtcn at the time when the Republican armies of France were carrying revolutionary principles through the length and breadth of Europe, overthrowing govemments in the name of liberty, and making war in the name of fratemity. This line and the following contain an excellent stroke of satire, menacé d'être libre, threatened with liberty, i.e. for whom the prospect of liberty à la française was a curse, not a boon.

nos rois, the présent governors of the nation, the Directory, or the Consuls, who were merely several kings instead of one.

1. 22. Ehl mais, why! La Sambre (l^. Sabis), a river of France and Belgium; la Meuse (L. A/osa). In 1795 a department formed from

the county of Namur and part of the Duchy of Luxemburg was annexed to France under the name of Sambre-et-Meuse.

1. 28. son boîichon, lis cork; from boucher, to block up. bouchon means also a wisp of straw, and a branch, or bundle of green leaves, hung up over the door of a public-house (etym. Germ. busch).

" Font un bouchon à vin du laurier du Parnasse." (Régnier, Satires.) Ilence the public-house itself.

"Les rouliers s'arrêtent à tous les bouchons^

1. 30. Ott relit tout Racine, (^c, a sound pièce of criticism tersely expressed.

P- 77) !• 3- ^'^ traître papier, a paper which takes you by surprise, which betrays the audience into hearing a quantity of nonsense for which they had not bargained.