[501] The Grand Vizier Kara-Mustapha laid siege to Vienna in 1683.
[502] A league formed in the Hague against France was called “The Triple Alliance,” and was entered upon in 1668 between England, Holland, and Sweden. Sometimes the treaty formed in 1717 between George I., the Regent of France, and the United Provinces is also called “Triple Alliance.”
[503] Cerberus, a dog with three heads, which keeps guard in the infernal regions.
[504] According to the commentators, two insignificant newsmongers are supposed to be portrayed in Demophilus and Basilides, an Abbé de Sainte-Hélène and a certain du Moulinet, whom some think might have been an abbé or a magistrate, because instead of clothes he speaks of his robe or gown.
[505] Proteus, in the mythology, is a sea-god residing in the Carpathian Sea, who could change his form at will.
[506] This paragraph is the longest La Bruyère has written; it covers between eight and nine pages in the original edition.
[507] An indirect homage to the assumed gravity of Louis XIV.
[508] Most probably this is a discreet allusion to Madame de Maintenon, whom the king had married in 1684, and in whose room generally a Council of State was held.
[509] Bas de saye, in the original, is a plaited petticoat worn in Louis XIV.ʼs time by actors in classical tragedies; it owes its name to the Latin sagum, a military cloak of the ancient Gauls. Brodequins was the name given to the buskins of comic actors; the tragic actors strutted in their cothurnes.
[510] This paragraph only appeared for the first time in the fourth edition of the “Characters,” published in 1689, and disappeared, never to be printed again, two years afterwards. It was probably suppressed for fear of offending either Louis XIV., who had allowed his former favourites, Bussy-Rabutin and Lauzun, to reappear at court (see page [18], note 65, and page [218], note 447), or of hurting the feelings of these two noblemen, above all of Bussy-Rabutin, who, after being admitted to the presence of the King, twice left a court where he felt he was not wanted, and could not obtain any command in the army.