[165]. Redondillas are stanzas of four short lines. This paragraph on versification reads curiously to ears accustomed to the pentameter blank verse of the English drama, stately at times and sprightly when need be, and, indeed, capable of infinite variety. The Spanish plays of to-day are written in very short metre, and French tragedies still rhyme.
[166]. Napoleon thought a big nose to be a sign of intellect, says history, mother of lies. Fiddlesticks! He chose men with big noses because they were easier to lead. An army of snub-noses would never have gone to Moscow.
[167]. It will occur to the ingenious reader, as indeed it has to the ingenious writer, that it would have been much simpler and more natural to ask Pauline to write her wishes. So it would. But then André was a poet and a genius, and—this is a romance. Besides, who knows but Pauline might have been locked up at the critical moment and denied writing materials?
[168]. It was the very incident here related, and which in its main outlines is historically true, that led to a police regulation forbidding the intrusion of masked outsiders into wedding parties and other festivals.