[699] The author states: “These are names of various shells.” The original has “le Léopard, la Plume, la Musique,” and the English names have been kindly suggested by M. Hugh Owen in “Notes and Queries” as equivalents for the French ones.
[700] A few years before La Bruyère wrote, there was quite a mania for butterflies at court, and in Paris.
[701] An allusion to the ordeal by duel, of which one of the last was fought between Jarnac and La Chateigneraye, in 1542, before Henri II. and his court. A treacherous thrust of the first-named nobleman has given rise to the proverbial saying un coup de Jarnac.
[702] Louis XIV. was strongly opposed to duelling, and several legal prohibitions of it were promulgated during his reign.
[703] Sophonius Tigellinus, a favourite and accomplice of the Roman emperor Nero, was put to death about the year 70.
[704] In the original, souffler and jeter en sable, “to gulp down;” only the last word is found in the dictionary of the French Academy of 1694. The old English translators of La Bruyère have been greatly puzzled by the sentence beginning with the word “a Tigellinus,” and give it: “a juggler, one who turns aqua-vita black, and performs other feats of legerdemain (other surprising things),” whilst the translation of 1767 speaks of “a fiddler, who, besides several odd performances on his instrument, gulps down,” &c.
[705] See the chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune,” [§§ 71,]-75.
[706] In the original la crapule, now no longer used for “intoxication.”
[707] C. Valerius Catullus (87-47 B.C.), the well-known Roman poet; is supposed to allude to the Abbé de Chaulieu (see page [342], note 630). The latterʼs disciple was the Chevalier de Bouillon.