trente-et-quarante, a gambling game, played with cards

3. Jean-Paul, as the German writer J. P. F. Richter (1763- 1825) is usually called, was made known in France by some translations of which Musset published a review in Le Temps in 1831 (reprinted in Mélanges, vol. ix of his Œuvres). The sentence referred to is as follows : " Sous Tempire d'une idée puissante, nous nous trouvons, comme le plongeur sous la cloche, à Tabri des flots de la mer immense qui nous environne." Musset advises us to read from beginning to end " le petit volume qui renferme ces gouttes d'un vin précieux." He seems to hâve been fond of the figure of the diver and the diving-bell, which he uses also in Lorenzaccio, act III, scène iii, and in La Nuit de Décembre.

Page 13. — I. les Anglais are regarded on the continent of Europe as indefatigable travellers. George Sand, in one of the Lettres d'un voyageur, written while in Italy with Musset,

p. 14-18] NOTES 135

speaks with pleasute of a région where " on peut itiarcher tout un jour sans rencontrer un seul Anglais/'

Page 14. — I. l'histoire du siècle. The idea poetically expressed in this speech is developed at length in the first part of La Confession d'un enfant du siècle; it is important as a key to the character of Fantasio and of Musset himself, who once said: ''Je me suis passablement brûlé les ailes en temps et lieu/' (See Barine, Alfred de Musset, p. 157.)