the subacid touches which make the book
lively, and which probably supply some explanation of its author's
unpopularity. The "furred law-cats" of all kinds were always a
prevailing party in Old France, and required stout gloves to touch them
with.

[265] This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore) is a
"Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in memory
of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Our
Lord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made _at
intervals_. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time straight
through. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."

[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phrases
like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking
"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more
elegantly and less cryptically calls it.

[267] Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious purposes.

[268] He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can be called
a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or as
Furetiere himself has it, _debiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps,
to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that the
novelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness of
bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in this
also.

[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself de
Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of his
legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon;
but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and there
appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.

[270] There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having been
this--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called
"free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the
seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar
infidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or
Saint-Ibar, as members of it--to all readers of Saint-Evremond,
Tallemant, the _Ana_, etc.

[271] Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the Demon of
Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes, sometimes tame
paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher,
or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present da