13 1 Plus de doutes: 'no more doubt', cf.,1 17 With plus, pas, jamais, rien, and other words of this type ne is omitted when the verb is omitted, but cf. 71 8, 88 3.
13 3 se ramassait sur lui-même. 'gathered himself,' 'crouched'.
13 7 Té! vé! dialectal for tiens, vois, used as exclamations, 'Well, well!'--adieu: in Southern France occasionally (as here and 64 4) a greeting ('hello'), though ordinarily, as in Northern France, a parting salutation ('good-by'). The Southerner prefixes an exclamation which Daudet writes sometimes et as here and sometimes hé, ('hey') as in 64 4.
13 9 la sienne 'his' (ballad), see 6 17.
13 13 de long en large: 'up and down'.
13 18 faire son bezigue: 'to play his game of bezique,' a game of Cards.
13 21 diable au vert: 'far away corners of the globe' The castle of Vauvert in the suburbs of Paris belonged to King Louis IX. Some Carthusian monks who desired to gain possession of it pretended that it was haunted by evil spirits, and it was abandoned to them, hence the expression diable Vauvert (Vauvert is a genitive, 'the demon of Vauvert'), which was later corrupted to diable au vert. The castle was far from the center of the city, perhaps it is for this reason that aller au diable vauvert, au diable au vert, means 'to go a long distance'. I have not seen an article on this locution which appeared in the Revue du Midi, 1911.--comment diantre: 'how the deuce', diantre is a euphemism for diable.
13 22 se trouvait-il: 'did it happen' Se trouver = 'to find oneself, itself,' 'to happen,' 'to be'.
13 26 Marseille: 'Marseilles,' the greatest seaport in France and the metropolis of the south, only sixty miles from Tarascon.