The latter was Louise-Henriette-Françoise de Lorraine (Mlle de Guise), daughter of the prince and princesse d’Harcourt. She became, in 1725, the fourth wife of Emmanuel-Théodose de la Tour d’Auvergne, duc de Bouillon. She is said to have been very beautiful but unscrupulous. She died at Paris, March 31, 1737, at the age of thirty.
9. scandale. It was a period of intrigue and frivolity.
13. Votre état est perdu: ‘Your profession is ruined.’ The abbé represents a certain type of men who frequented the homes of the nobility and who were expected to maintain themselves in favor by continually supplying the latest bits of gossip. Owing to their position as confidants of the public in questions of morality, the members of the clerical profession were supposed to be particularly well informed on such matters.
16. boîte à mouches: ‘patch box.’ Small bits of black taffetas were placed on the face (“beauty spots”) by many fashionable ladies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
23. Bajazet: a tragedy (1672) by Jean Racine. The scene is in Constantinople.
[4], 5. ne m’en veut pas de ma franchise: ‘will pardon my frankness.’
7. système des mouches: ‘custom of wearing bits of taffetas on the face.’
19. est d’autant plus piquante: ‘will excite the greater interest.’
[5], 10. Des scrupules... à vous! ‘You have scruples!’
16. Sobieski: Jean Sobieski, king of Poland; born in Galicia in 1629, died at Warsaw in 1696. He performed important service for Europe by repelling invasions of the Turks.