I. 9. marchands de pathos ^ i. e. bombast-mongers

l. 12. dans un siècle d'airain. Airain poetical ioT fer^ in opposition to âge d'or.

1. 16. The English reader should keep this line in mind, on account of the singular and at times vituperative verse on which the poet is going to embark.

La Curée.

Page 1. At the time of Barbier's death, in 1882, the first form of this poem was published by M. Julien Travers, of Caen. The title was Le Lendemain, diatribe: 'the day after,* i. e. the day after the Révolution of 1830. From this we see that the main idea was the same ; but, notwithstanding some fine Unes, the poem could by no means hâve made the same impression as the second did. A verbal comparison is unnecessary, as the wording and even the metrical form is entirely différent. In the MS., La Curée is ïambe II simply.

1. I. Oh! lorsqu^un lourd soleil. The sun of July, 1830. The Révolution had been the work of a few days. On the 2 5th, Charles X had by his famous * Ordonnances ' dissolved the Chamber, which had just been elected, but not yet summoned. On the 27th, 2 8th, and 2 9th the insurrection raged through Paris : both the Hôtel de Ville and Tuileries fell into the hands of the people. Then the King appointed the Duke of Orléans lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and abdicated. On August 7 the duke was proclaimed as Louis- Philippe I, roi des Français, by the new Chamber.

Barbier was not in Paris when the Révolution broke out, but some forty miles away in the country. He at once hurried to town and saw it still hot with the fray. As he says in his Souvenirs personnels, Paris, 1883, the people were heroic ; the people did everything.

Page 2. 1. 8. La Marseillaise. For a whole génération it had been a proscribed hymn, a rebel song.

1. 15. Qui mâchait la cartouche: with theguns in use at the time in France, i. e. flint guns, cartridges were not put into the barrel as now, but had to be torn with the teeth, when a small portion of the powder was placed in the * pan ' and the remainder of the powder poured into the barrel.

1. 16. Note the éloquent swing of the period taking up the whole of the first two verses. This holds good for the four following verses.

1. 17. aux tricolores flammes^ with their tricolour flags or * cocardes.' Louis XVIII and Charles X had clung to the white flag of the Bourbon dynasty. As a pledge of his sympathy with modem France, Louis-Philippe had at once adopted the tricolour in his historical réception at the Hôtel de Ville, where the aged La Fayette greeted him as Ma meilleure des républiques.'

1. 20. Héros du boule-vardde Gand. After Napoleon's return from Elba, during the Hundred Days, 1 8 1 5, Ghent had become, as it were, the capital of Louis XVIII, where he published his gazette, Le Moniteur de Gand, and held his court. To hâve paced the 'boulevard' there, for many young royalists and prudent * heroes ', was the only title to favour and preferment, not simply with the restored king as such, but, what incensed the poet most, with one who had been placed on the throne by the popular rising of July.

1. 24. Generally, in French poetry, r^^r counts as two syllables. By a kind of slurring, Barbier scans it as one only, possibly intentionally.

1. 25. se jonchait de merveilles: a telling phrase of splendid conciseness, suggesting at once scattered corpses and marvelous achievements.

1. 30. Du noble faubourg Saint-Germain. For over a century it has been a suburb only in name. It is really a quarter of Paris on the left bank of the Seine, still patronized to a great extent by the old aristocracy.

1. 34. appas, a poetical conventional term in the eighteenth century.

Page 3. 1. 44. Avec des bras rouges de sang, Victor Hugo himself offers but few sketches so terse and so graphie.

1. 47. ses allures défile. Fille hère stands for file de joie.

1. 48. Cinq ans, i.e. 1 789-1 794, from the storming of the Bastille to the fall of Robespierre.

1. 50. ses premiers amants, the leaders of the Révolution up to the days of the First Consul, viz. Rolland, Brissot, Vergniaud, Danton, Saint- Just, Robespierre.

no ÏAMBES ET POÈMES