[481] The original has il vous coupe, “he will cut you,” an expression also used by Saint-Simon and Madame de Sévigné; the English phrase “to cut a person,” in the sense of passing by him without pretending to see him, seems almost to have the same primary meaning.
[482] Two celebrated actors of the seventeenth century; Floridor, whose real name was Josias Soulas de Frinefosse, died in 1672, and Mondori in 1651.
[483] See page [240], note 480.
[484] This minister is said to have been Louvois (see page [204], note 423), who liked to have many postulants about him.
[485] See page [164], note 322.
[486] The Rue Saint-Denis was a street in Paris crowded with small tradesmen, and still exists. Our author was nearly always afraid of clearly mentioning Versailles or Fontainebleau, and very often employed only the initial letters and asterisks or dots.
[487] The original république, which was inserted for the first time in the fourth edition of the “Characters,” is used in the sense of the Latin respublica.
[488] During the reign of Louis XIV., the signboards, which were often very large, swung above the heads of the passers-by, and the police tried in vain to reduce their dimensions or to have them fixed against the walls. Sometimes the government interfered in the municipal or provincial elections without any opposition, and sometimes a diminution of town councillors, or a promulgation of a stamp act for legal documents, was violently resisted, and the rebellion had to be quenched by an armed force, as, for example, in Guienne and Brittany from 1673 till 1675.
[489] Taxes are meant here.
[490] Adolphe de Belleforière, Chevalier de Soyecourt, a captain of the gendarmes of the Dauphin, died two days after the battle of Fleurus (July 1, 1690), of wounds received in this battle, in which his elder brother, the Marquis de Soyecourt, was also killed. Both those young men were the sons of Maximilien Antoine, Marquis de Soyecourt, grand veneur, who died in 1679, and was the original of Dorante in Molièreʼs comedy Les Fâcheux. The name of the Marquis is often mentioned in the lampoons of the times for his reputation of valour in other fields than those of Mars. La Bruyère was a friend of the family, whose name was always pronounced Saucourt, and even sometimes written so.