The passage—
We shall obey, were she ten times our mother,
is thus translated:
Nous obeirons, plutôt dix fois qu'une. N'est elle pas notre mere?
M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penée ainsi exprimée." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he did himself.
Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?" is translated,
De Danemarck où donc est la reine jolie?
Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty—very pretty, indeed. A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage:
Car le gentil Robin n'est un oiseau de proie,
Il fait tout ma joie!
It is also exceedingly amusing to note how the old adjective "whoreson" bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned into "le cadavre des enfants de nos mères;" and in like manner that "whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou né d'une fille à la morale elastique."