le 2 4 prairial, June

1. 38. galères. The regular word for ships propelled by oars as well as sails, which long continued to be used in the Mediterranean.

1. 40. bleus, rouges et blancs, the three colours of the Tricolor flag. It was adopted in 1789, dropped at the Restoration, and re-adopted in 1830. All three colours had historical associations. Blue was the colour of the reliquary of St Martin of Tours, the emblem of the Court of Anjou; red represented the oriflamme of the Abbey of St Denis, and was borne first by the Counts of Vexin, and then, about 1100, by the Kings of France; white was the colour of the Bourbons.

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1. 2. de la religion, i.e. of the Knights of St John, who were bound by certain religious vows, like the Templars described in Ivanhoe. Their duty had been to protect the pilgrims visiting the Holy Places. Now that the day of pilgrimages was over, they might have been usefully employed in putting down piracy in the Mediterranean, but they simply lived in luxury and idleness.

1. 3. le Gozo. The second island of the Maltese group, about onefifth the size of Malta.

le fort Saint-Elme, on the point of the peninsula forming the town of Valetta. Le feu St-Elme is the name given to the electric discharge sometimes noticed on the masts of ships In ancient times it was said that

"the great twin brethren Sit shining on the sails."

la dernière croix militante. The two other orders of military monks, dating also from the crusades, were the Templars, who came to an end in

1312, and the Teutonic Order whose 'Ordensland' became the secular duchy of Prussia in 1525.

1. 4. qui tombait, how distinguished from qui tombât? E.B. 252, Obs. 3.

1. 9. Desaix. The hero of Marengo (1800). When the battle was all but lost, he brought up his division, and changed the fortune of the day. He fell in the engagement.

" Desaix, who turned the scale, Leaving his life-blood in that famous field." Rogers.

Napoleon said of him, " Of all the generals I have had under me, Desaix possessed the greatest talents. He loved glory for itself."

1. 13. d'un enfant de dix ans, the hero of Mrs Hemans's well-known poem, "The boy stood on the burning deck." Both father and son perished in the wreck of the Orient at the battle of the Nile. They were seen floating on a shattered mast when the ship blew up.

1. 19. pendants... sortant. An excellent example of the form in ant, inflected and uninflected. In one case it is strictly an adjective, and in the other it retains its verbal force. E.B. 212 a, 212 b.