[256] This lady is said to have been Madame Fleurion dʼArmenonville, daughter of a clothier, whose husband was keeper of the seals and directeur des finances.
[257] Those men were the so-called “farmers of the revenue,” nearly all of low birth, and who formerly had been in some trade or business. See page [136], note 266, and page [137], § 15.
[258] Little, silly, ugly rich men were not more rare in our authorʼs time than they are at present; but the commentators will have it that the Marquis de Gouverney and the Duke de Ventadour were meant.
[259] M. de Saint-Pouange, a relative of the ministers Colbert, Le Tellier, and Louvois, and the latterʼs principal secretary, is meant.
[260] Nearly all the great lords had Swiss doorkeepers. Petit-Jean, in Racineʼs comedy Les Plaideurs, says also: “Il mʼavait fait venir dʼAmiens pour être Suisse.”
[261] The “Keys” mention several people for Clitiphon, such as M. le Camus, lieutenant-civil, or his brother the cardinal, or another brother who was maître des requêtes.
[262] In the original there is a play on the word rare which cannot be rendered in English.
[263] This seems to refer to Platoʼs “Timæus” and his “Phædo.”
[264] Jupiter is the largest and Saturn the second largest planet of our solar system. The celebrated Dutch natural philosopher Huyghens van Zuylichem (1629-1695), who discovered the fourth satellite of Saturn and proved the existence of its ring, lived in Paris from 1666 till 1681, and may have met La Bruyère.
[265] The original has trivial, from the Latin trivialis and trivium, hence the meaning of exposed to the public gaze, “perceptible.”