tient du prodige, has something marvellous in it

1. 27. la rapacité des traitants, from traite = droit, impôt. The name traitant was given till the end of the eighteenth century to those who had to do with the raising of the taxes either (i) as farmers, or (2) as receivers, or (3) as bankers advancing money to the treasury on the security of the presumed receipts. The îemptation to dishonesty was so great for the traitants that the very name which indicated their business came to be regarded as an insuit, and the chansonniers of the first thirty years of the eighteenth century are full of satirical pièces directed against them ; it is well known that Lesage's play, Turcaret, was meant to denounce the scandalous spéculations of thèse gentlemen.

1. 34. Il fut obligé ér=c. Thèse public stocks, or rentes, had been sold by Foucquet for sums below their proper value, so that the governnient was paying an extravagant interest to theholders. Colbert bought them out, by paying back the sums originally invested, and thus saved the différence between the interest which had been paid hitherto and that at which the improved crédit of the state enabled him now to borrow: see above, p. 67, 1. 21, note.

1. 36. Ç2(e Von remboursa sur le pied de V achat, which were paid back at what they had cost.

1. 38. était en possession de âr^c, had the prescriptive right of verifying, i.e. confirming and registering, edicts. This right, originally a mère formality, enabled the Parlement to obtain, in times of public excitement, e.g. during the Fronde, some control over législation, by rc'fusing to register the edicts. But its opposition could alvvays be overridden by the king, if he chose to hold a "lit de justice," and hâve the edicts reglstered in his présence: cf. above, p. 4, 1. 41, note.

Page 87.

1. 14. fatale année. The year of the battle of Malplaquet, the fourth great defeat which France had suffered in tlie war of the Spanish succession, whcn France was almost denuded of money and men, and was alsi.) suffering scvercly from famine.

1. 12. cet usage des remontrances. The question between the Parlement of Paris and the Crown was whether the former were bound to register the edicts or laws sent to them, first, with liberty of remonstrating after^uards, or whether they oiight not rather to postpone the registration till aficr their remonstrances had been complicd with, or at any rate heard, by the king.