Être aux anges = To be delighted, in raptures, in the seventh heaven.
Un ange bouffi = A chubby child.
Anguille
Échapper comme une anguille = To be as slippery as an eel.
Quand on veut trop serrer l’anguille, elle s’échappe = “Much would have more and lost all”; He who is too greedy loses everything. (See [Embrasser].)
Vouloir rompre l’anguille au genou = To attempt an impossibility.
Il est comme l’anguille de Melun (more correctly, Languille de Melun), il crie avant qu’on l’écorche = He is like the eel of Melun, he cries out before he is hurt.
[An actor, called Languille, was once acting the part of St. Bartholomew at Melun, when he was so frightened at the entry of the executioner to flay him alive, that he rushed off the stage yelling.]
Il y a quelque anguille sous roche = There is a snake in the grass; I can smell a rat.