tristesse bruyante, ' muttering melancholy

1. 19. M. de Malesherbes was the minister of Louis XVI, whom he afterwards defended with great éloquence before the French Convention. He perished during the Révolution.

1. 28. transformée en auberge. The house in which Chateaubriand was born still forms part of the ' Hôtel de France et de Chateaubriand ' in the little sea-girt town.

Page 10. 1. 5. la tempête dont le bruit berça mon premier

sommeil. A record of this storm has been preserved. It is not without interest to note that the tempests of the Atlantic lulled alike the first and last sleep of this child of nature.

1. 29. Froissart (1337-1410), the French chronicler and historian whose descriptions of the fourteenth century are matchless for their quaint picturesqueness and charm.

1. 31. dans les marches normande et anglaise, ' in the Norman and English marches.' 'March' was a name given to frontier provinces. The period referred to is that of the English domination in France.

Page 11. 1. 16. Maupertuis was a geometrician and man of science born at St. Malo in 1698. L'Abbé Trublet, a member of the French Academy, was a relation of Maupertuis.

1. 19. comme les moines de Saba dans le ravin du Cédron is a référence to Chateaubriand's travels in Palestine. On one occasion he visited the convent of Saint Saba, where the heads of three or four thousand monks murdered by the infidels were exposed to view. Left alone with thèse gruesome relies Chateaubriand gave himself up to reflection. He was, however, rudely awakened by one of the fathers, who, weary of the monotony of his life, wanted to discuss European politics and the doings of the outer world.

1. 20. l'affaire La Chaloiais. La Chalotais was Procureur Général of the Breton Parliament and instigated the suppression of the Jesuits. He was imprisoned in the Château of St. Malo where he composed his Mémoires. * L'affaire La Chalotais ' was the story of a Jesuit plot to poison him while in prison, invented by his partisans. Mme Moreau, sister of Mme de Chateaubriand, and her son Annibal Moreau were implicated in the invention and heavily fined.

Page 12. 1. 3. avait deux ans de plus que moi. This is an inaccuracy. Chateaubriand's sister Lucile was four years older than her brother.

L 7. bras dégingandés, 'with disproportionately large arms.'