II

2. homeurs, cf. page 28, note 6. Sganarelle now launches forth into more nonsense.

3. la partie brutale . . . sensitive. The same expression occurs in Molière's le Dépit amoureux, * Sensitive ' hère = capable of receiving impressions from extemal objects through the sensés.

Pagre 40. — I. Vous avez beau faire, etc., You may try as much

as you like. Avoir beau = *to (do a thing) in vain.* Cf. the English 'to hâve a fine time' doing a thing, but without bringing about any resuit.

Pagre 41. — i. vous rendre sourd. Molière doubtless got this amusing idea from Rabelais* account of the *' moral comedy of him who had espoused and married a dumb wif e ". The husband, f eeling that he would be happier if his wife could talk, calls in a physician. ... "The encyliglotte, which she had under her tongue, being eut, she spoke and spoke again ; yea, within f ew hours she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and so long, that her poor husband returned to the same physician for a recipe to make her hold her peace. There are (quoth the physician) many proper remédies in our art to make dumb women speak, but there are none that ever I could learn therein to make them silent. The only cure which I hâve found out is their husbands' deafness". The physician makes the husband deaf, and the wife, *'perceiving that her scolding was but in vain, . . . grew stark mad *\ The comedy ends with husband and wife drubbing the physician. (Urquhart-Motteux Translation.)

Pagre 42. — i. matrimoninm. Latin, matrimony,

2. dès que j'ai eu découvert, as soon as I discovered ; the use of

this double compound for the past anterior (cf. page 12, note 4) is

rare.

Pagre 43. — i. qu'elle aurait été fille, etc., that she would hâve been j'ust the sort of girl to elope with him,

2. Plus fin que vous, etc., A man that* s sharper than you is nofooL

3. voici bian (bien) dn tintamarre, heré*s a fine how-de-do. Tintamarre generally = ' racket ', Min \ For bien du^ ci, page 13, note 3. — s'en est enfuie = s* est enfuie ^ has run away^ eloped, — de la façon, in ihis manner; thus. Cf. page 16, note 4. — commissaire, police magistrate, one of whose duties was to pursue thieves, murderers, and abductors.

p. 44-46] NOTES 59

Page 44. — i. tous serez pendu. In the seventeenth centnry ''abductors and their accomplice* " were sometimes punished by hanging. — ne bougez, dotCtyou budge, With bouger^ as with savoir ^ pouvoir, oser, and cesser, négation may be expressed by ne aione.

2. en présence de tant de gens, before so many people, i.e. on the gallows.