Lettres Persanes, cf. page 93, note

4. parlementaires, "members of a parlement'''' (cf. page 25, note 2).

5. la grâce, ever since Calvin's day, and especially in the controversy between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, ail France had been struggling with the question of the various kinds and amounts of grâce accorded by heaven and needed by man, along with the implicit questions of

Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.

6. les convulsions, le diacre Paris, a saintly Jansenist, having died (i727),shortly afterward miracles, accompanied by convulsions, began to be wrought on his tomb. The king, judging the phenomenon heretical rather than pathological, ordered it stopped. This épisode of the convulsionnaires is one of the most striking chapters in the annals of hysteria.