[785] Marcus Valerius Martialis (43, was living 104) says: “Iras et verba locant.”
[786] Montaigne, Montesquieu, and many other eminent Frenchmen attacked the legal employment of torture, but it was continued in France till 1788.
[787] Our author uses by exception honnêtes gens for honest men. A certain Marquis de Langlade was put on the rack (1688), and after having been innocently sentenced to the galleys on a false accusation of having robbed the Duke de Montmorency, died there in 1689; and a servant, Le Brun, accused of the murder of Madame Marel, died after having been cruelly tortured (1690). The real criminals were discovered some time afterwards, and this produced a great sensation at the time La Bruyère wrote (1691).
[788] It has been said that the wife of M. de Saint-Pouange (see page [134]134, note 259) was robbed of a diamond buckle when leaving the opera, but that it was returned to her by M. de Grandmaison, grand prévôt de la connétablie.
[789] The “Keys” mention as one of these men the President de Mesmes. See page [168], note 331.
[790] During the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV., fire-raising was very common in the rural districts of France, and it was one of the means the peasants chose for revenging themselves on their masters for their exactions and for fiscal cruelties.
[791] The original has lanternes, tribunes in Parliament whence people could see what was going on without being seen.
[792] Il se voit officier in the original. See page [153], note 304.
[793] Titius and Seius were often quoted in Roman law, as “A.” and “B.” are in English law, in stating a case to counsel. Mævius was a wretched poet of Virgilʼs time, and seems to be wrongly named by La Bruyère in apposition to Titius. According to some commentators, the mishap attributed to Titius really happened to a M. Hennequin, procureur général au grand conseil.
[794] The notary, M. de Bonnefoi, in Molièreʼs Malade Imaginaire (act i.
scene 9) explains to the hypochondriacal Argan: “You cannot give anything to your wife by your will ... Common law is opposed to it ... in Paris and in all countries where common law exists.... All the good which man and woman joined in wedlock can do to each other, is a mutual donation while living; and then there must be no children.” And when Argan asks what he has to do to leave his wife his property, the honest notary replies: “You can quietly choose an intimate friend of your wifeʼs, to whom you will give, in due form by your will, all that you can; and this friend shall afterwards give it all back to her.”