[3] PROCUREUR. See le Legs, note 126.
[4] MADAME ARGANTE. An imperious, selfish, vain, old woman, of the type Marivaux generally chooses for the mothers in his comedies.
[5] ARLEQUIN. When this play passed to the stage of the Comédie-Française, the name of Arlequin, familiar to the Italian comedy, was changed to Lubin, and his dress modified to suit the new rôle. See le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, note 2.
[6] DUBOIS. A "real creation" among the valets of Marivaux. Like Lépine of le Legs, he is quite above the station of the traditional valet, and may well be called Monsieur Dubois. The intrigue of the piece is entirely in his hands, and is carried out with the shrewdness and dexterity of an able man of affairs.
[7] JOAILLIER. One who works in, or sells, joyaux ('jewels'), 'a jeweller.'
[8] DÉTOURNEZ. Used in the sense of dérangez (Littré, 10°).
[9] N'EN FAITES PAS DE FAÇON. The en nowadays would be considered superfluous, and façon would be put in the plural. The use of en is peculiar in this case, for it refers to the idea partly expressed by Dorante. It stands for Ne faites pas de façons parce que je me dérange pour vous.
[10] HONNÊTE, 'Polite,' 'civil.' Notice the use of the singular, following the rule that after the pronouns nous and vous, when these pronouns designate a single person, even if the verb is plural, the adjective remains singular.
[11] QU'IL. A laquelle would be better than que, in modern French. The construction of the sentence is somewhat awkward, and betrays the lingering influence of the Latin forms, still so evident in many of the best seventeenth century authors, such as Bossuet, whose use of qui and que is very striking. In the eighteenth century the language was acquiring greater freedom, but it is not until the nineteenth that it rids itself of much of the old syntax.
[12] PROCUREUR. See le Legs, note 126.