Page:Musset - On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1884.djvu/147

NOTES. 135 P. 107, 1. 10. Ecriture b&tarde, or b&tarde alone, is the more usual phrase. It indicates a tumble-down mongrel kind of handwriting. The needless expansion of the ordinary phrase completely accords with the Prince’s pedantic finicking character. P. 108, 1. 10. Esprit vaste was a phrase which came into use at the end of the 17th century. The question was raised whether, considering the generally unfavourable connotation of the Latin vastus, it could be legitimately used as a term of praise. The Academy decided in the affirmative : but there were dissentients, among whom St. Evremond wrote a dissertation ’Sur le mot Vaste,’ full of delicate irony. It is not impossible that the use of the phrase here in the Prince’s mouth has some satirical suggestion. P. 110, 1. 29. Note here the marked difference between the meaning ofthe French respectable and the English ’ respectable,’ which in common use has nothing princely about it. P. Ill, 1. 18. In this conjunction abonder takes the meaning of ’to give one’s help without restraint,’ and the phrase may be rendered ’ people who more than agree with me.’ . 24. Triboulet, who is the central figure of Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s Amuse, was court fool to Louis XII and afterwards to Francis I. He accompanied Louis in his expedition against the Venetians in 1509, and is described in Jean Marot’s Siege de Pesquaire. He is mentioned also by Rabelais {Pantagruel, Book iii. cap. 37 et sqq.). There seems little reason for supposing that he was anything more than a half-wit with flashes of strange shrewdness, but the reference in the text indicates his reputation as a caustic sage who found it convenient to pose as a jester. He died about 1535. P. 112, 1. 25. Attraper la mouche is equivalent to making a bull’s-eye. Faire mouche is the more colloquial phrase for the same thing. P. 114, 1. 26. The calembour here {caletnbour is a word-play de- pending on likeness in sound and unlikeness in meaning) is on two different significations of sens — the one applying to the five senses, the other to sense as opposed to nonsense. P. 119, 1 23. Double entente. Note this as a warning against the vile phrase double entendre, which is constantly used by English writers, and which is neither French nor English nor anything else but a monstrously base coinage which has somehow become cunent. P. 120, 11. 30-33. It has been said that there is something in com- mon between Shakespeare and Musset ; and here, consciously or not.