IV INTRODUCTION

de France, Caro was the pet of that class of idle or ambitious women who, without any genuine taste, affect love of letters either as a fashionable pastime or as a means of material advancement for their families or proteges. These attended his lectures in full dress, vying with each other for his notice ; and Caro himself carried foppishness to the extreme of pausing from time to time during a lecture to dust his face with a powder-puff!

An artist of consummate skill, the author has wrought in this comedy a masterpiece of dramatic construction ; wh ile its dialogue is a most rare reproduction of that reciprocal flash of a colloquial style of thought, that crisp, short sentence — every word telling, and that expletive phraseology, which together make French conversation at once so vivacious and so fascinating.

The notes, while not neglecting other difficulties, are directed especially to the elucidation of the different shades of meaning of the expletive word or phrase — often so difficult to translate, but a nice appreciation of which is indispensable to him who would speak or write a foreign language as though it were in any sense his own.

Such constructions as are explained in any fair grammar, and such uses of words as are found in any good academic lexicon have been purposely omitted ; but it is hoped, on the other hand, that colloquial phraseology will throughout be found rendered into idiomatic English.

A few lines, in no way essential to the argument of the play, but which mar its fitness for class reading, have been omitted from the text.

For valuable aid in the preparation of this little work, earnest thanks are here expressed to President Charles