des traitants. See below, p. 86, 1. 27, note

1. 17. changer de religion. An allusion to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and the persécution of the Huguenots.

1. 36. le temps de François IL Francis II began to reign in 1559. The religious wats began in 1561, and from that time onwards France had but little rest, except for brief intervais, from internai troubles, partly owing to religious disputes and partly to a turbulent nobility, till the suppression of the Fronde in 1654. This period présents a striking contrast with the reign of Louis XIV.

I. 37. n'étant plus cantonnés &=c., because they ail flocked to the court.

Page 82.

1. 5. une seule conspiration. This is not strîctly true. M. Pierre Clément in his interesting essay on the Chevalier de Rohan {7 rois drames historiques) lias enumerated tN^o other conspiracies against Louis XIV. The first was that of the Huguenot Roux de Marcilly, accused (May, 1668) of having wished to murder the king, and broken on the wheel on the 2rst of June, 1669. The second conspirator, an adventurer of the name of Sardan, concliided in 1674 with the Prince of Orange and with the King of Spain a treaty by which he engagée! to bring about an insurrection in the four provinces of Guyenne, Languedoc, Provence and Dauphiné.