[343] The Abbé de Villars, who died in 1691, was a son of the Marquis de Villars, French ambassador to the Court of Spain, and is said to have been the original of Narcissus.
[344] The Convent of the Feuillants, a branch of the Cistercian monks, was in the Rue Saint-Honoré; that of the Minims, an order founded by St. Francis of Paula in 1453, was near the Place Royale.
[345] Ombre, a Spanish game of cards, often mentioned by English authors of the eighteenth century; Pope has a poetical description of it in his “Rape of the Lock.” Reversis is another game of cards, played by four persons, and in which those who make the fewest tricks win the game.
[346] A golden pistole was usually worth eleven livres.
[347] The Gazette de Hollande was a newspaper published in Holland, and in which everything was put that could not be printed or said in France. For the Mercure Galant, see page [24], note 86.
[348] Cyrano de Bergerac (1620-1655) was the author of the Histoires Comiques des Etats et Empires de la Lune, etc., of a tragedy, Agrippine, and of a comedy, Le Pédant Joué, from which Molière borrowed two scenes.
[349] Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1596-1676), an author of various plays, novels, and poems, and one of the first in France to attack the authority of the ancients.
[350] Louis de Lesclache (1620-1661), a grammarian and a writer on philosophy.
[351] Barbin, a well-known publisher at the time our author wrote.
[352] The Plaine was probably the Plaine des Sablons; for the Cours, see page 164, note 2.