infaillible : mind the spelling

28. fortune foncière, ' landed property,' ' real estate '; fortune

mobilière^ ' personal property. '

29. 8. les jetait, for les aurait jetés. Remember this terse use of

the iniperfect instead of the past conditional.

16. de l'étincelle sur la poudre : cf. \^ictor Hugo's Les Voix intérieures, xii. —

Toi, tu la contemplais, n'osant approcher d'elle, Car le baril de poudre a peur de l'étincelle.

20. que sais-je ? often used in this sensé of ' and what not ? '

23. anoblir is used in a literal sensé, ' to raise to nobility ' ; enjioblir is always taken figuratively.

l'échevinage : the échevins, who originally administered justice in the plaids or assizes, had long been deprived of their judicial functions and reduced to the office of aldermen.

Notes 97

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29. 25. en pleine philosophie : the philosophers of the eighteenth

century, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, etc. , powerfuUy contributed by their writings to the fall of the a?icie7i régime.

26. à la veille d'une révolution radicale : the story begins at the end of May 1788, and the storming of the Bastille took place on the i4th of July 1789.

28. du tiers : i.e. du tiers état. The tiers état, ' third estate,' was in the old French monarchy the third order of the nation, which, together with the nobility and the clergy, formed the états généraux (States-General). It consisted of the deputies of the bourgeoisie ( ' middle class'), the common people not being represented. Its glaring inferiority to the other two orders caused Sieyès to write at the beginning of 1789 his famous pamphlet, Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? Tout. — Qu'a-t-il été Jusqu'ici? Rien. — Que demande-t-il? A devenir quelque chose.

2g. battre la campagne : lit. ' to scour the couhtry ' ; fig. ' to talk at random,' 'wander,' 'rave.'