[531] Although this paragraph is only half the size of paragraph 12, page 253, there is only one full stop in it in the original, and that is at the end.
[532] The original has avec, which, in the seventeenth century, often was used for “in spite of.”
[533] The author adds in a note: “This is not so much a portrait of one individual, as a collection of anecdotes of absent-minded persons. If they please, there cannot be too large a number of them, for as tastes differ, my readers can pick and choose.” The chief traits of Menalcas are based on stories related by the Count de Brancas, who died eleven years before the above paragraph first saw the light (1691); others are said to have happened to the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, afterwards Prince de Conti (1664-1709), and to a certain Abbé de Mauroy, chaplain to Mademoiselle de Montpensier. Eustace Budgell (1685-1736) depicts in No. 77 of the “Spectator” “an absent man,” and also speaks of Monsieur Bruyère, who “has given us the character of an absent man with a great deal of humour;” and then prints “the heads” of Menalcasʼ portrait. According to Wattʼs Bibliotheca Britannica, Budgell was the author of a translation of La Bruyèreʼs “Characters,” published 1699 and 1702; but in the edition of 1702 there is on the title-page, “made English by several hands.”
[534] Many of the streets in Paris were so narrow when our author wrote, that two people could hardly pass abreast; it was, therefore, the fashion to “give the wall,” as it was called, to persons of a superior rank.
[535] See page [243], note 486.
[536] The wigs were already worn very long, and completely concealed the ears.
[537] See page [164], note 322.
[538] There was usually only one or two arm-chairs in a reception-room, reserved for the master or mistress of the house, or for both.
[539] It was reported that Brancas, chevalier dʼhonneur of the queen-mother, Anne of Austria (1602-1666), behaved in almost a similar manner to his royal mistress.
[540] Blotting-paper was not invented when our author wrote; even now it is not unusual abroad to find the ink of letters dried with sand, either plain or coloured.