le parlement de Toulouse. See note to p

223. — 22. Jugement, etc. The quotation is from Voltaire's Correspondance (April, 1562),

225. — 19. Si on lui ôtait. /' is not used before on when a pronoun beginning with this letter follows.

226. — 24. Voltaire. He was living at this time at Ferney in France near the Swiss frontier.

229. — I. d'Alembert. One of the habitual guests in Mademoiselle de Lespinasse's salon; many of her letters were written to him.

26. Loyola mourut de sa main. An allusion to the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762.

230. — 7. Rousseau s'enfuit. Driven from France on account of his Emile, he went temporarily to Switzerland.

232. — I. la galerie. La galerie des glaces is referred to, one of the most lavishly decorated portions of the palace at Versailles. Its decorations were due to the artist Lebrun; the name comes from seventeen large mirrors placed opposite as many large, arched windows. On the ceiling are paintings by Lebrun, depicting the various events of the reign of Louis XIV.

13. la reine. Marie-Thérèse, daughter of Philip IV of Spain; she became the wife of Louis XIV in 1660.

31. la ligue de l'Europe. Michelet refers first to the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) the soul of which was William III, prince of Orange. This League stood for the freedom of the conscience as opposed to such intolerance as Louis XIV had exhibited in his revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685); second, to the League of the Hague (1701- 1713), in which William opposed Louis again. The English were aided by Holland, Austria, Germany and Portugal. The general result was that the French possessions at the beginning and at the end of the reign of Louis XIV were about the same.

234. — Subtitle. Transformation des Esprits, etc. The general change that came over France in the latter half

of the eighteenth century and resulted in the Revolution was a breaking-away from tradition either religious or governmental. The new attitude v^as brought about by the growing dissatisfaction with the absolute and oppressive monarchical government, by its reverses in the Seven Years' War, by the debauchery of Louis XV and the court, by the excessive taxation of the peasants and by the extortion on the part of the nobles, by the rise of public opinion, by the new philosophy of Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu and the other philosophers and Encyclopedists (that is, an attack on tradition and a reliance on reason and science, and in Rousseau's case a return to nature and simplicity), finally by the rise of the democratic spirit coming from America. Through the teaching of such men as Rousseau and Beaumarchais, who preached equality, France was in a frame of mind adapted to the reception of the American ideas. In the subtitle the date, 1777, refers not to the beginning of the American Revolution, but to the beginning of French intervention.

I. la chute de Turgot. This honest minister was dismissed by Louis XV, because his financial reforms were distasteful to the privileged classes.

235. — 14. trois livres. The novel of la Nouvelle Héloïse (in which Rousseau opened the eyes of the people to true love and to nature), Emile (on the natural method of bringing up children), le Contrat social (a political work in which equality and universal suffrage were proclaimed).

24. les salons changèrent. The salons were influential social and literary gatherings in the drawing-rooms of cultivated ladies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first was that of the celebrated Marquise de Rambouillet (under Louis XIII). Towards the end of the eighteenth century these salons, frequented by the influential literary men, became imbued with the new philosophic spirit; especially was this true of the three most celebrated salons of the time (those of Madame du Deffand,

Madame Geoffrin and, above all, of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse).

236. — 4. la fille d'ouvrier . . . entre Rousseau, Plutarque. Her father was an engraver; Rousseau and Plutarch were two of her favorite books.

10. avait tout gagné, hors l'honneur. A reference to the lawsuits in which Beaumarchais became involved by his speculations; he was accused, probably justly, of forgery, but regained his popularity by several witty satires directed against his judges.

14. Les insurgents tirent l'épée en avril 1775. At Concord, Massachusetts, April 19.