[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor Princess Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incident recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could not get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households and Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.
[301] I.e. colour-printed cotton from India—a novelty "fashionable" and, therefore, satirisable in France.
[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?
[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, the latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.
[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originally intended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.
[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, La Galerie du Palais.
[306] For note on Télémaque see end of chapter.
[307] Who is here herself an improved Doralise.
[308] To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a little grivoiserie in him, but absolutely no polissonnerie, still less any cochonnerie. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words when, in a short French-Greek dialogue, called La Volupté, he makes Aspasia say to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire débauché."