XIII. O NÉCESSITÉ DURE!... - XIV. AUX DEUX FRÈRES TRUDAINE.
L. 3. _tissus._ See note to p. 15, l. 260.
L. 7. Voltaire, _Mérope_, II. ii: 'Il souffre le mépris qui suit la pauvreté.'
Ll. 14, 15. _Mes parents,... Mes écrits imparfaits._ Elliptically expressed, the thought understood being obviously: 'such are the objections raised by my heart.' _Imparfaits_, of course, means unfinished.'
Ll. 21. _aveugle d'espérance_, blinded by hope.
Ll. 7, 8. _Autant que l'univers... autant il a...._ _Autant que... autant..._ was displaced by _autant... autant..._ only lately. See Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.
L. 9. _sais-je voir._ _Sais-je_ is here more expressive than _puis-je_ would be.
Ll. 15, 16. _Qu'une bouche... peut cacher un serpent à l'ombre d'un sourire._ An incoherent metaphor.
L. 26. _vague._ _Vague_, in the sense of Lat. _vagus_, 'wandering,' seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: '[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au _vague_ peuple hébreu.'--RONSARD.
Ll. 37. _ce lac enchanté._ The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).
L. 38. _trois pâtres_--Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.
L. 39. _leurs neveux._ Their descendants a sense which the English 'nephew' retained till the end of the seventeenth century.
L. 43. _Hasly._ A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.
L. 49. _ce trésor indulgent_, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.
L. 52. _presser l'herbe._ One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English '_press_ a couch, a bed,' is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.
L. 53. Virgil, _Ecl._ i. 83.
L. 54. _Ma conque._ A wrong extension of the sense of 'conch,' the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of 'horn.'
L. 55. _cet air_, the _Ranz-des-Vaches_.
L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, _Epod._ ii. 39 ff.
L. 73. _aux lieux amers._ England; where Chénier made a stay as Secretary to the French Embassy. For _aux = en les_ see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 79. _Arve._ The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.
L. 80. _la cime._ Engelberg; in Unterwalden.
L. 85. _monts chevelus._ Dubellay has 'forêts chevelues' and J.-B. Rousseau 'monts chevelus,' Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ v. 63.
Ll. 86. _Qui contenez._ In the sense which E. _contain_ formerly had, of 'to confine.'
L. 93. _grotte...._ The _Trou de Saint Béat_ or _Saint Bat_ by the Lake of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said to have ended his days in abstinence.