[158] Lise is generally supposed to have been Catherine-Henriette dʼAngennes de la Loupe, Countess dʼOlonne, one of the most dissolute ladies of the court of Louis XIV., who was fifty-five years old when this paragraph appeared (1692), and died in 1714. Many particulars about her are related in Bussy-Rabutinʼs Histoire amoureuse des Gaules.
[159] This is said to allude to a certain Mademoiselle de Loines, who fell in love with a crooked, ill-looking, dwarfish limb of the law.
[160] The memoirs of the time of Louis XIV. teem with examples of young men of the highest families who considered it no disgrace to live at the expense of rich and amorous old crones, and even to receive money from young ladies.
[161] The original has dans une ruelle. Ruelle means literally “a small street,” hence the narrow opening between the wall and the bed, on which bed superfine ladies, gaily dressed, were lying when they received their friends, and thus ruelle came to mean “any fashionable assembly.” In Dr. Ashʼs “Dictionary of the English Language,” London, 1755, ruelle is still defined “a little street, a circle, an assembly at a private house.”
[162] En cravate et en habit gris, says the French, which was the usual dress of dandified magistrates, although they were strictly forbidden to wear any other clothes but black ones.
[163] Only officers of the kingʼs household were allowed to wear gold-embroidered scarfs.
[164] This alludes to the Count dʼAubigné, a brother of Madame de Maintenon, who was no favourite at court. See also the portrait of “Theodectes” in the chapter “Of Society and Conversation,” § 12, page [106].
[165] The “lady” is said to have been Madame de la Ferrière, the wife of a maître des requêtes, and Dorinna a certain Mdlle. Foucault, a relative of some well-known conseiller au parlement, who was in love with a Doctor Moreau.
[166] The original has questionnaire, a word then already antiquated, and which meant a man applying the question or rack.
[167] Roscius seems to have been intended for a portrait of the celebrated actor Michael Baron (1653-1729), whilst the names of Lelia, Cesonia, Claudia, and Messalina probably allude to some of the ladies of the court who intrigued with actors. During the eighteenth century the names of the Maréchale de la Ferté, and of her sister the Countess dʼOlonne (see page [61], note 158), both of very dissolute manners, were mentioned as having been the originals of Claudia and Messalina, whilst Claudia was also, according to some, a portrait of Marie-Anne Mancini, Duchesse de Bouillon, though it is not probable that La Bruyère intended to allude to her. Bathyllus and Cobus stand for Le Basque, Pécourt, or Beauchamps, dancers at the Opera; Draco is Philibert, a German flute-player of those times; Lelia or Cesonia are supposed to have been a certain widow of the Marquis de Constantin.