29. clair-semées. Sparsely scattered.
31. Landes et de taillis. Waste-land and underwood.
33. Gros bonnets. Important persons.
37. Qu’il était en train d’arranger. Which he was occupied in putting in order.
5.— 10. Propre à. Fit for.
11. Ne s’était pas gênée pour croire. Had found little difficulty in believing. Gênée is p.p. of gêner, a derivative from gêne (Lat. gehenna, a valley south of Jerusalem, where the Israelites used to sacrifice their children to Moloch. The Jews later on looked upon this Valley as a place of eternal damnation, and in the New Testament this word bas become the symbol of hell). — Gêner, which originally meant to torture (the sense is still bad in the 17th century), signifies now simply to inconvenience, to embarrass.
13. À grand’peine à ce qu’il fît son droit. Unwilling that he should study law. Faire son droit, literally, to make one’s {study of) law. Droit (Lat. directum), in the sense of justice, means the collection of the rules governing society. Verbs expressing approval or disapproval and the like, when followed by que (à ce que) and an object-clause specifying the object approved, etc., require after them the subjunctive.— The adjective grand in grand’peine (Lat. grandis) had originally the same termination both for masculine and feminine, because Latin adjectives in -is have no feminine inflection. The insertion of the apostrophe in such expressions as grand’chose, grand’mère is therefore misleading : e is not elided, for there never was an e.
14. Avait ménagé si bien les subsides. Had so carefully spared the money-supplies.
21. Avocat… avoué. Barrister… attorney.
25. Eût-il voulu prendre ce parti. Had he wished to take this resolution. The imperfect and pluperfect subj. of certain verbs may express a concession by placing the verb before its subject. These verbs are avoir, to have; être, to be ; devoir, to be destined ; rarely with other verbs.
6. — 9. Dès lors. From that time. The etymology of dès is disputed. Dietz, however, explains the point in a very plausible manner. Dès, according to him, is an association of the two Latin prepositions de and ex, and it seems that the exclusively prepositional force of dès should confirm this. Lors (Lat. illa hora, at that hour) ; the compound alors has for formula ad illam horam.
17. À son gré. At his pleasure ; satisfactorily. (Lat. gratum.)
