13: Des princes de Hesse. This is a mistake, if Hugo means that a prince of Hesse was one of the electors, as there were none of that house until 1803, when Landgrave William IX of Hesse-Cassel became Elector with the title William I.
14: Dans ma peau de lion emporter comme Hercule. Hugo probably alludes here to the story of Hercules and the Cercopes, two mischievous gnomes who annoyed Hercules in his sleep and were captured by him and given to Omphale. Baumeister (Denkmäler des klassischen Alterthums, Vol. 1. p. 664) thinks that these impish creatures may have been monkeys. I can find no statement that Hercules carried them off in his lion's skin, but he is said to have strung them by their feet to a pole.
15: Triboulet, a deformed court jester of King Francis I of France, and the grotesque hero of Hugo's play «Le Roi s'amuse». Translate: «would be a head shorter than Triboulet himself».
16: Gand, Tolède, Salamanque, Ghent, Toledo, Salamanca.
17: For cacophony this line would be hard to beat. It sounds like the croaking of frogs; and there is no reason apparent why the author should indulge in such a hideous eccentricity.
18: sauf, plus tard, à les reprendre, «with the mental reservation that I might take them back».
19: Vous vous couvrez? The wily Ricardo, hearing the king address him familiarly with tu (l. 17), which was the form of address from the kings of Spain to grandees, whom they also called «cousin», puts on his hat in the king's presence—another privilege of a grandee.
20: Baste, «enough», from the Italian basta.
21: Peut-être on voudra d'un César. «Perhaps she will put up with an emperor.»
22: Ce Corneille Agrippa pourtant en sait bien long! «And yet this Cornelius Agrippa has great insight!» Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, born 1486 at Cologne, died 1535 at Grenoble, was a celebrated scholar, who filled various offices, of more or less doubtful character, under the Emperor Maximilian I. and Francis I. He wrote a satire «De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum», and a work against witchcraft, «De occulta philosophia», but had the reputation of being a magician himself.