I. comme sur des roulettes, ' swimmingly ' ; lit. 'as on

casters.'

,, 20. la vase, 'mire'; le vase, 'vase,' ' vessel.' , , 27. une fine mouche, ' a sly puss. '

79. 8. de quel front aborderait-il . . ? ' how could he dare to

approach . . ? '

, , 22. radouber, ' to refit ' ; a naval term used here jocularly.

, , 28. le Géronte . . le Cassandre : characters who appear in a

great many plays, and whose names are often used in the

sensé of ' old dupes. ' , , 29. il se rongeait les poing's, ' he was fretting himself. '

80. 15. les Titans : the children of Heaven and Earth, who revolted

against Saturn, and were hurled into Tartarus by Jupiter's thunderbolt.

,, 26. comme le troisième larron de la fable : La Fontaine's fable Les Voleurs et V Ane —

Pour un âne enlevé deux voleurs se battaient : L'un voulait le garder, l'autre le voulait vendre.

Tandis que coups de poing trottaient, Et que nos champions songeaient à se défendre, Arrive un troisième larron Qui saisit maître Aliboron.

27. licol, 'halter,' old form of licou , from /ïVr (Lat. ligare) and

col, cou (Lat. colhim),

28. Aliboron : the origin of this name, often given by old writers

to the donkey, is not known. According to an ingénions inventor of fanciful etymologies, a barrister having once used aUhoriim as the genitive plural of alibi, this barbarism came to mean an ignorant person.

,, 31. échec pour échec, 'if he must fail. ' Cf. périr pour pé?'ir, il vaut mieux périr victorieux, ' if we are to perish, it is better to perish victorious. '

81. I. mieux valait : for the omission of the pronoun il cf. autant

vaut.

, , 2. que de partager : notice the use of de before the infinitive in the second term of a comparison, after aimer 7nieiix, valoir mieux, and plutôt que.

3. il eut improvisé : the past anterior is often used, instead of

the preterite, after an adverbial expression of time, to mark the rapidity of an action.