[805] Constitution (de rentes) understood in the text.
[806] Guy Crescence Fagon (1638-1718) became in succession physician to the wife of the Dauphin, the queen, and the royal children, and in 1693, when dʼAquin fell into disgrace, first physician to Louis XIV. He was for his time an able and conscientious man. His eldest son became Bishop of Lombez, and his second intendant des finances.
[807] Fagon was a strenuous defender of emetics and of Peruvian bark, which latter remedy was first imported into France in the seventeenth century, and had become so popular that Jean la Fontaine sang its praises in a pretty long poem, le Quinquina, the French name of the Peruvian bark, so called after the Countess del Cinchon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, whence the bark was first sent to Europe.
[808] Fagon was also professor of botany and chemistry in the kingʼs botanical garden, and one of the editors of its catalogue, called Hortus regius, published in 1665.
[809] The belief in sorcerers and witchcraft was very general when our author wrote, and there existed an almost universal idea that robbers and murderers might be discovered by means of the motion of a hazel rod. Even the magistrates in France tried sometimes such a rod to find out criminals.
[810] Many eminent pedagogues have held a contrary opinion; for example, Malebranche in his Traité de Morale, and Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Emile, both maintain languages should be acquired when the child is not too young.
[811] The going “open-breasted” was the fashion of the time of Francis I.; ruffs and bands were worn in France during part of the reigns of Henri II. and Henri III., but were no longer in vogue when our author wrote; they were, however, still used in Spain.
[812] This is an allusion to the wearing of very tight silk stockings and short breeches, showing the legs.
[813] It was never the custom in France for ladies to hide their feet, but in Spain it was considered highly improper and indecent even to show the smallest part of them (see the Countess dʼAulnoy, Relation du Voyage en Espagne, 1690); and as the wife of Louis XIV., Maria Theresa, was a daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, it is probable that the ladies at court followed the fashion set to them by the queen.
[814] According to Voltaireʼs Siècle de Louis XIV., chap, viii., the king and his officers went, however, to the trenches wearing head-pieces and breast-plates.