[559] The Marshal de la Feuillade is supposed to be meant. Besides the monument he erected to Louis XIV. (see page [227], note 455), there are many other proofs of his eccentricity, as, for example, his going with two hundred volunteers to wrest Candia from the Turks, and his voyage to Spain to challenge a certain M. de Saint-Aunay, who was accused of having calumniated Louis XIV.
[560] The commentators speak of a certain captain of the guard, Boisselot, and of an Irish officer, Macarthy, one of the generals of James II.; but there would have been nothing astonishing in their “mixing with the people.” It may be that this paragraph points at the Duke of Orléans, a brother-of Louis XIV., who had shown some valour at the battle of Cassel in 1677, but who was never more employed, and was not very “judicious.”
[561] All the “Keys” say the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Harlay, was meant. See also page [238], note 476.
[562] The Cardinal de Bouillon (1644-1715) is supposed to be meant by this remark; he was, however, according to Saint-Simon, always very dissolute in his manners. See page [210], note 436.
[563] Some “Keys” name here wrongly Boutillier de Rancé, the founder of the Trappists, whilst others speak of Le Camus, bishop of Grenoble (see page 47, note 4). La Bruyèreʼs allusion is far more general.
[564] All the “Keys” say this refers to the Dictionnaire de lʼAcadémie, but its first edition only appeared in 1694, and this paragraph was published four years before. See page [9], note 46. It alludes probably to those encyclopedias called Traités sur toutes les sciences, très abrégés à lʼusage de la noblesse, or to some collection of anecdotes, a kind of omnium gatherum, entitled Bibliothèque des gens de cour; perhaps it might also apply to some verses then in vogue, and called vers abécédaires, of which the first line began with an “a,” the second with a “b,” and so on. Those “sports of wit,” which our author calls by the name of jeux dʼesprit, witticisms, also existed later in England, e.g., “The Foundling Hospital for Wit.”
[565] Several persons have been named whose duty it was to distribute charity to the poor, but it has been rightly observed that the person alluded to in this paragraph “makes a display of it,” and therefore it cannot have been his duty.
[566] In French, sœurs grises, grey sisters, because the Sisters of Charity wore grey dresses. Bands were then worn by every one, but clergymenʼs bands were plain and called petits collets, the name our author gives them.
[567] Holders of certain legal or financial offices had the right of reversion or next nomination whilst they were alive, and not seldom delayed exercising it until they were very old; but unless they did so within forty days of their death, and had paid an annual tax called le droit de paulette, so called after Charles Paulet, a minister of Henri IV. who established it in 1604, and which tax varied from a sixtieth to a fourth of the value of the office, the king had a right to make fresh appointments. See also page [192], note 400.
[568] Jean François, Marquis dʼHautefort, who was, it is said, the original of Harpagon in Molièreʼs Avare, seems to be partly portrayed in this paragraph.