prérogatives, consideration. For instance, one might choose to be shot rather than guillotined, to look death in the face with unbandaged eyes, and to give the command to fire, all matters regarded as questions of honor by soldiers sentenced to death.
sans bruit, unostentatiously, but de Grignon takes it literally. The rest of this scene recalls not unsuccessfully Molière's sans dot in "l'Avare," Act I., Scene 5.
ACT III. SCENE 10.
Page 80.
de gaieté de coeur, frivolously or wantonly, here.