[461] Thais, an Athenian courtesan, mentioned in Drydenʼs “Alexanderʼs Feast;” Phryne was another Athenian courtesan, said to have been Apellesʼ model.
[462] Philipsburg, an ancient fortified town of the Grand Duchy of Baden, had been taken by the Dauphin in 1688, after a monthʼs siege.
[463] Among the citizens who had “become powerful” may be reckoned J. B. Colbert (see page [132], note 255), whose three daughters married dukes, and whose son married a relative of the Bourbon family.
[464] La Bruyère had, no doubt, experienced this when at the Duke de Condéʼs.
[465] The original has mal content, for, during the seventeenth century, mal was more generally placed before an adjective than now; at present mécontent would be used, which, when La Bruyère wrote, had often the meaning of “a rebel.”
[466] Gaston dʼOrléans (1608-1660), the brother of Louis XIII., and even the Prince de Condé were examples of such “great.”
[467] The original has vertu, in the sense of the Latin virtus, courage.
[468] Thersites, according to the Iliad, was squinting, humpbacked, loquacious, loud, coarse, and scurrilous, but he was not a “common soldier,” but a chief. Achilles was the hero of the allied Greek army besieging Troy.
[469] Le Brun (1616-1690), a celebrated painter, was still alive when this paragraph appeared. For Lulli and Racine, see page [46], note 124, and page [11], note 33. Compare also page [226], § 19.
[470] Achille de Harlay (1639-1712), President of the Parliament of Paris, and descended from an illustrious line of magistrates, is said to have feigned an excess of modesty which was not natural to him. See also page [45], note 122.