HOTES

good. Touchera, tomeddle with. Thenamr Sainte n y y touche is given fiamiliarly to a female hypocrite.

Hgt 4 Mme la— Doucette : Diminutive of doux, gentle.

4 14— Sons chape [or sous cape): Underhand, secretly. Cape, B. Lat capa (quia quasi totum captât hominem), firom capere, to contain, to take.

Chape, a cloak with a hood ; the hood drawn over the head prevented the wearer firom being

4 16— Qu'il ne vous en déplaise: With ail due déférence to you, with your leave ; an fconical excuse.

4 19— En usoit : Behaved, acted. Remark oit instead * of ait, as the présent spelling would be. In Old Fr. in the imper£ Ind. the conditional and in other words which we now speU ai, ai was used and pronounced accordingly. In the middle of the iôth century there was a tendency to Italianise the French language, and to soften in certain words sounds considered hard, such as those represented by oi; and hence came ci to be pronounced like ai. Laurent Joubert, the famous physician of Henri III., and the author of a * Dialogue sur la Cacographie Française," was one of the first to propose to alter the spelling in accordance with the new pronunciation. Racine was the first great classical writerto substitute ai for oi in verbs. Voltaire, by adoptmg this new spelling everywhere where pronunciation authonsed it, caused it to be generally adopted ; hence this spelling iscalled u Orthographe de Voltaire."

4 20— Cet état me blesse : This state of things is quite

offensive to me.

3 3— Et je ne mâche point ce que j'ai sur le cœur : And I say without mincing what I hâve in my mina. Mâcher, Lat. mastkare. This metaphoristaken firom ruminants who chew the cud.

5 S— Cagot de critique : Bigoted fault-finder.

5' 9— Céans : In this house ; ça, hère, ens, Lat mtus,

inside.

S 13— Qu'on ne lasse des crimes. Que ... ne stands

for sans que. Que can be used akne to

3 présent certain compound conjonctions, as : n que, pour que, jusqu'à ce que, etc. Attendons qu'il vienne, for, jusqu'à ce qu'il vienne, f 14-31 contrôle 1 He censures, finds fouit with. g 16— Il prétend : He has the intention of.

Page 5 Une 22— J'en prévois une suite : I foresee that something (unpleasant) wiil corne of it

5 22— Pied-plat : Mean fellow ; KteraUy* flat-footed. The flat-footed conscripts were rejected for the army; henoe a useless, bad fellow.

5 27— Deniers means hère a very small coin, amrthing. At one time nearly every town of importance had a "denier" of différent value : le denier parisis (Paris) ; le denier tournois (Tours). The denier was abolished under Louis XIV.

30— Il en irait : Thinçs would go on ; il, impersonaL 3— Tout son fait : His whole conduct— ail he does. 22— Plantés : Statiened, planted as if they would grow there and never leave the place.

7 3 -Médisance : Slander. Fr. médire, Old Fr. mesou* The particle mé is péjorative in its force. This prefixisthe Latin minus, which successivdy assumed the forms min\ mis, mes, mi.

7 4— Caquet : Cackle. This, like the English word, is onomatopœic.

7 10— Autrui : Others. Autre cornes from aUer, and autrui from the gen. aUerms ; in Old Fr. it was only used as the oblique case of autre. Médire sûr— we should say now, médire de.

7 14— Et d'y donner le tour ... : And to put on it the construction which they désire other people to believe it has.

7 15— Des actions . • . autoriser les leurs. Autoriser, to justify, may be iollowed by far or de/ s'autoriser, by de only.

7 21— Ne font rien à l'affaire : Are eut of place hère.

7 28 — A son corps défendant : In spite of herseli» because she cannot help it.

8 6— Un chacun, obsolète form for chacun.

8 9— A sevré : Has weaned, has deprived. Sevrer,

from Lat. separare, to separate ; hence to wean, to separate a child from its nurse.

8 10— Contes bleus: Nonsense, stuff. Probably the same idea as the popular expression, conter des couleurs, to tell falsehoods.

8 12— Tient le dé: LiUraUy, holds the die, so that others are unable to throw : engrosses the conversation ail day long.

8 15— Chez soi. Molière, with the other authors of the I7thcentury, used tri where we should now use lui, elle, eux ; as a gênerai raie they used soi where in Lat se would hâve been used— "afntdse."

8 16— Au besoin : In case of necessity 3 hère, as. it was muchwanted.

Pùgi Slim 17— Fourvoyé: Goneastray. Lat/*m, viart,

8 19— Rien qui ne soit. If the relative pronoun refers to" some substanttve or adverb with a négative sensé, sucb as personne, peu, çuère, rien t aucun, the verb must be in the subjunctive.

8 30— La tour de Babylone. Mme. Pernelle means

Babel. Father Coussin, a Jesuit who died in 1651, says, in his "Cour Sainte ":—" Les hommes ont fondé la tour de Babel, et les femmes la tour de babil » ; he is probably the Dr. whom Mme. Pernelle misquotes.

9 2— Et qu'il fera beau temps ... : And I shall not

set my foot in your house in a hurry again.

9 3— Et bayer aux corneilles: Gaping like a fool; Uterally, gaping at the rooks as they fly.

Bayer, an onomatopœic word ; 6a, expressing the opening of the mouth, with a suffix itare.