plat-à-barbe, s4aving dish

20. têtes de pipe: allusion to the comical faces sometimes carved on pipes.

28. curés de campagne. Anatole France who is to-day a militant anti-clerical and an aggressive friend of socialism, will smile at this statement of twenty years ago. See /xtroduction.

31. grimoires, wwintelligible writings ; applied at first to the books of the magicians. peu s’en faut! — very nearly! little short of it; idiom.

81.—7. Bérézina generally spelled Beresina, a Russian river in the south western part of that country: Napoleon during his disastrous retreat of 1812 crossed it after a terrible battle (26th and 20th of November) in which there was immense suffering and in which he lost 20,000 men. The scene has been often reproduced in popular pictures.