XIV. aux deux frères trudaine. – André Chénier

Ll. 7, 8. Autant que l’univers… autant il a…. Autant que…
autant… was displaced by autant… autant… only lately. See
Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.

L. 9. sais-je voir. Sais-je is here more expressive than puis-je
would be.

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.’

L. 55. cet air, the Ranz-des-Vaches.

L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, Epod. ii. 39 ff.

L. 73. aux lieux amers. England; where Chénier made a stay as
Secretary to the French Embassy. For aux = en les see note to p. 16,
l. 308.

L. 79. Arve. The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters
the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the
omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.

L. 80. la cime. Engelberg; in Unterwalden.

L. 85. monts chevelus. Dubellay has ‘forêts chevelues’ and J.-B.
Rousseau ‘monts chevelus,’ Cf. Virgil, Ecl. v. 63.

Ll. 86. Qui contenez. In the sense which E. contain formerly had, of
‘to confine.’

L. 93. grotte…. The Trou de Saint Béat or Saint Bat by the Lake
of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said
to have ended his days in abstinence.