[Ll. 15, 16.] Qu'une bouche... peut cacher un serpent à l'ombre d'un sourire. An incoherent metaphor.
[L. 26.] vague. Vague, in the sense of Lat. vagus, 'wandering,' seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: '[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au vague peuple hébreu.'—RONSARD.
[Ll. 37.] ce lac enchanté. The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).
[L. 38.] trois pâtres—Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.
[L. 39.] leurs neveux. Their descendants a sense which the English 'nephew' retained till the end of the seventeenth century.
[L. 43.] Hasly. A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.
[L. 49.] ce trésor indulgent, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.
[L. 52.] presser l'herbe. One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English 'press a couch, a bed,' is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.
[L. 53.] Virgil, Ecl. i. 83.
[L. 54.] Ma conque. A wrong extension of the sense of 'conch,' the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of 'horn.'