il se jeta à corps perdu, he threw him'^elf headlong

1. 25. de se faire un parti, to make for themselves a faction; se hère is in the dative.

Page 83.

1. 3. cette vie de cabaret, that pot-house life. The etym, of cabaret is doubtful. It is well known that during the reign of Louis XIII and the early part of that of Louis XIV there existed a group of young men who, by opposition to the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the other précieux reunions of the day, associated poetry with debauchery, and wit of the truest kind with the coarsest Epicureanism. The confrérie des bouteilles and the cabarets d''honneur were the Boliemians of the seventeenth century.

1. 5. Les inœurs tiennent à si peu de chose: mœiirs is taken hère in the sensé of manière de vivre, usages, coutumes.

tiennent à, are affected by.

1. 9, rendit les esprits phis agréables. This is an allusion to the social gatherings at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and the Saturday afternoon parties of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, which are of a somewhat later date.