[69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actual surname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory.
[70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minor novels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone the process, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised.
[71] That is to say, in the text: the second title of the whole book, "ou Les Enfants de Maître Jacques," does in some sort give a warning, though it is with Maître Jacques rather than with his children that the fresh start is made.
[72] He has, though unknown and supposed to be an intruder, carried her off from an English adorer—a sort of Lovelace-Byron, whose name is Lord Gousberycharipay (an advance on Paul de Kock and even Parny in the nomenclature of the English peerage), and who inserts h's before French words!
[73] If novels do not exaggerate the unpopularity of these persons (strictly the lay members of the S.J., but often used for the whole body of religious orders and their lay partisans), the success of "July" needs little further explanation.
[74] That is to say, not a bogey, but a buggy.
[75] Here is another instance. Ludovica's father and a bad Russo-Prussian colonel have to be finished off at Waterloo. One might suppose that Waterloo itself would suffice. But no: they must engage in single combat, and even then not kill each other, the Russian's head being carried off by some kind of a cannon-ball and the Frenchman's breast pierced by half a dozen Prussian lances. This is really "good measure."
[76] Ousting others which deserved the place better? It may be so, but one may perhaps "find the whole" without particularising everything. Of short books especially, from Fiévée's Dot de Suzette (1798), which charmed society in its day, to Eugénie Foa's Petit Robinson de Paris (1840), which amused me when I was about ten years old, there were no end if one talked.
[77] V. inf. on M. Ohnet's books.
[78] Many people have probably noticed the frequency of this name—not a very pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or other attraction—in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. It was certainly due to Le Solitaire.