Je déteste Ï admiration A passage quoted by M. Mole

in his famous reply to de Vigny's Discours de Réception at the French Academy. "De là vient, sans doute," he said, "que votre esprit proteste si souvent contre les plus grandes renommées de notre histoire, et se complaît à rabaisser ceux devant lesquels les générations se sont inclinées." The reference is especially to the representation of Richelieu (the founder of the Academy) in Cinq-Mars, and of Napoleon in this book.

Page 6.

1. 2. nous garder de, ' keep ourselves from,' 'take care not to.'

1. 4. corruptrice. A form preferred in French to the present participle; the adjectival use of nouns of this form is a characteristic French idiom, E.B. 37. The practice had begun in Latin: — victrices catervas, Hor. Odes, III. 3. 63; in domo regnalrice, Tac. Ann. 1. 4.