CHAPTER IX
Page 86. 1. lignes: A Une is the twelfth part of an inch. — 2. larges pattes : broad clasps.
Page 87. 1. sur ses cuisses maigres : on his narrow lap. — 2. Moïse, Hérodote, Thucydide, Tite-Live: Moses, Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy.
Page 88. 1. vous saurez : you must know. — 2. c'est pour faire entendre : that means.
Page 89. 1. Malheur au pasteur du néant : woe to the shepherd of little worth. — 2. Mayence : A city on the Rhine, the German Mainz. It was taken by the French under General Custine in 1792, and retaken by the Prussians the f ollowing year. — 3. Custine : A French gênerai born in Metz in 1740. He served as colonel at Yorktown, Va., in 1781. He conducted a brilliant campaign on the Rhine in 1792. He was guillotined August 28, 1793.
Page 91. 1. consommer le péché : to destroy sin. — 2. Forgeons les épées en noyaux et les hallebardes en serpes: "They shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruninghooks," Isaiah II. 4. — 8. pour bien laisser prendre le tabac: to let the tobacco catch well. — 4. ça veut dire leurs écus, leurs florins et leur monnaie de toute espèce : that means their crowns, their florins, and their coins of every kind.
Page 92. 1. seraient entrés . . . que je n'aurais pas été : might 1 hâve entered, and I should not hâve been. — 2. tricot : " I am wearing
i a winter overcoat and other warm clothing that I brought in case of a
j change of température. The captain wears his tricot, which is a knitted
i over-skirt fitting like a coat of mail. 1 * — Philip Gilbert Hamerton in
" The Saône/' p. 105. — 3. il mettait de vieux chaussons : he wore ' some old socks. — 4. au Bœuf- Rouge et au Cruchon d'Or: Names
of inns, The Red Ox and The Golden Jug.
Page 93. 1. Du moment qu'une bataille s'est livrée avant-hier, il faut que nous ayons eu le dessous : if a battle was f ought day before yesterday, it must needs be that we were worsted.
I Page 94. 1. le tour des yeux et le menton dessinés en arêtes :
} the chin and the bones about the eyes sharply prominent ; or, more
i freely, deep-sunk eyes and sharp chin. — 2. ce Richter ne mérite
pas pour deux liards de confiance : this Richter doesn't deserve a
cent' s worth of confidence. The liard was a small copper coin worth
a quarter of a sou or half a cent.
Page 95. 1. regret: reluctance. — 2. Brunswick: The Duke of Brunswick, a nephew of Frederick the Great, was born in 1735. In 1792, he was made commander- in-chief of the allied armies of Austria and Prussia, which invaded France and were defeated by Dumouriez. — 3. le bois de lit : head-board ; usually bed-stead.
Page 96. 1 . Champagne : A part of France which lies to the west of Lorraine and is comprised in the modem departments of Marne, Aube, Ardennes, Haute Marne, and Yonne. — 2. lancer des proclamations : The Duke of Brunswick announced by proclamation, July 26, 1792, that he had corne to France, in the name of the kings, to restore Louis XVI. to his authority. He threatened to treat as rebels those cities which should dare to défend themselves, to shoot ail inhabitants caught with arms, and to hand Paris over to the soldiers if the Tuileries were insulted. — 3. nous lui avons fait la conduite : we escorted him. — 4. r Argonne : The Argonne is a rocky and forest-clad plateau
in North-eastern France, extendîng along the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. In the Argonne Hills are several défiles or narrow passes. The famous defence of the French frontier by Dumouriez in 1792 is'called the Argonne Campaign. — 5. la bataille de Valmy: The heights of Valmy in the department of Marne were the centre of the battle in which the French Repnblicans under Kellerman defeated the Prussians and Austrians under Brunswick, September 20, 1792. Goethe was présent at this battle. When the day was over, he said : " In this place and on this day begins a new epoch in the history of the world."
Page 97. 1. à la grâce de Dieu : trusting to Providence.
