Katharina von Bora left a convent to marry Luther

1. 26. The Clouds of Aristophanes, which made a violent attack on Socrates, and even suggested, in conclusion, burning the philosopher, are assumed by Quinet to bave been instrumental in inclting the people against the unfortunate sage and bringing about his death-sentence.

I. 27. La place Louis XVL The famous square in Paris known as Place de la Concorde bore the name of Place Louis XV before the Révolution. This name was changed to Place de la Révolution during the Révolution, and there Louis XVI was beheaded. It was called Place Louis XVI during the Restoration, and once more Place de la Concorde by Louis-Philippe.

Page 97. 1. 28. La question des douanes. An allusion to the recently started Zollverein. See Introd., Ix.

Page 98. 1. 8. An allusion to Klopstock's Messias and Schiller's Wallenstein.

II. 11-12. The Thekla of Schiller's Wallenstein-^ the Klarchen of Goethe's Egmont ; the Margarethe of Goethe's Faust ; the heroine of Tieck's Genoveva.

Page 99. 1. 7. Thèse historical words were spoken to Charles X, when the Révolution of the Three Days (July 27, 28, 29, 1830) broke out.

Page 100. 1. 10. By the Treaty of Lunéville, forced by Bonaparte on the Emperor in 1799, France obtained the left bank of the Rhine, and compensated the dispossessed owners by the grant of mediatized impérial cities. A number of petty princes also lost their independence, or immédiate sovereignty, and were mediatized or subordinated to more powerful rulers, preserving the externals and pomp of power without its reality.

1. 16. Le Moniteur was the officiai newspaper of the French Government. Niebuhr, the great historian, is said to hâve died

(183 1) of the moral shock which the Révolution of July dealt him, as this event caused him to form the most dismal outlook of the future of Europe.

Page 101. 1. 13. Ammon, one of the chief Egyptian gods, was beUeved by the Greeks to stand for Zeus. On the conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great called himself the son of Ammon.

1. 15. This stricture upon Goethe's impassibility proceeds from the same romantic bias which had dictated Quinet's impeachment against Goethe as the destroyer of the old German artworship (cf. note to p. 67, 1. 32). It is just, in so far as Goethe had imposed upon himself as a principle not to yield bhndly to passionate impulses, but to rise above emotional expérience towards a harmonious balance of ail the mental faculties. His alleged heartlessness, or even cruelty, with regard to Bettina von Arnim has fallen to the ground, since the spurious character of Bettina's correspondence with Goethe, published by herself, has been proved beyond ail doubt. Quinet could not anticipate the results of this later discovery.

Page 102. 1. 2. Orgon. The bigoted ' bourgeois ' hoodwinked by that hypocrite of piety and virtue, Tartufe^ in the well-known comedy of Molière.

1. 34. In 18 18 Hegel was appointed to the chair of philosophy in the Berlin university, which had been left vacant since the death of Fichte.

Page 103. 1. 26. Paul-Louis Courier, a count by birth, enlisted as a volunteer in 1792, and served first in the armies of the Republic, then of the Empire, until 1809, when his independent, well-nigh savage humour made it impossible for him to obey orders any longer. Quinet probably finds fault with his pride in his title and his aristocratie way of living. But Courier never recanted his early convictions. He became one of the most unrelenting opponents of the Restoration, and was even sent to prison for the boldness of his political lampoons. His réputation as a pamphleteer is unique. He is also well known as a Hellenist.

Page 104. 1. 37. Cf. note to p. 55, 1. 26.

Page 106. 1. 26. Gros-Jean^ a phrase used by La Fontaine in his fable La Laitière et le Pot au Lait to designate a penniless clown. It is to be found in the Epilogue of the fable : —

Chacun songe en veillant ; il n'est rien de plus doux.

Une flatteuse erreur emporte alors nos âmes . . .

Quelque accident fait-il que je rentre en moi-même,

Je suis gros Jean comme devant. — {Fables, vu. x.)

(Chap. XIV.) Quinet expresses, in this lyric, the French claim to the possession of the left bank of the Rhine. His grasp of the situation in which France and Germany then stood towards each other was so firm that he was able to voice, in thèse pathetic Hnes, the feelings which lay obscure and latent in the hearts of the people, and which ominous events, four years later, caused to issue forth tumultuously. See Introd., Ixii fï.

Page 108. 1. 20. The logical construction is : Les gnomes féodaux vont aiguiser la lance du drapeau tricolore . . .

Page 110. I.4. Quinet mentions in one of his letters an article of the Augsburg Gazette, protesting against the enraged tone of the German Press with regard to France, and praising such manly rebukes as that of Quinet in his iSlj et 1840 (this chapter was wiitten in 1842). Cf. p. 124, 1. 30 flp.

1. 14. Arminius (a latinization of 'Hermann'), chief of the Cherusci, was the soûl of the résistance of the Germans to the Roman armies under Varus. He succeeded in decoying the Romans into the Teutoburg Forest, where they were destroyed and where Varus killed himself (a.d. 9). Arminius' famé had been revived by the devotees of Germanie ancient lore, and his name made a rallying word for the Nationalists.