15: j'ai associé… personne: i.e. he is, as it were, a silent partner, a sort of «amateur banker.» An amateur in music, painting, etc., practices his art as a hobby, for his personal satisfaction, and not as a profession.
16: Il n'y a… blondes: fair complexions are getting very scarce.
17: Comme… aimons: Just the shade we dote on, and not «How we love them!»
18: c'est qu'il est: this c'est que, often omitted in English, introducesa reason or explanation; in this case, for his exclamation of alarm.
19: Ferney: four or five miles northwest of Geneva, and for twenty years the residence of the great French writer, Voltaire.—Lausanne: some thirty-three miles northeast of Geneva.
20. Je ne tiens pas en place: I can't sit still.—J'ai envie de: I have half a mind to.
ACTE II, SCÈNE II
1: c'est tout coeur, tout feu: _he is so warm-hearted, so impulsive!—ça ne sait pas vivre: he doesn't know what's what! Lit., «he doesn't understand life,» what is important in life (e.g. coffee after meals) and what is not. Ça still patronizing, if not contemptuous, acte I, scène VI, note 9.
2: ça ne lui a pas réussi: he didn't make a success of it, i.e. it made him feel sick.
3: en plein soleil: in the blazing sun. Cf. en plein air, en pleine mer, «in the open air,» «in mid ocean.»