The Charterhouse of Parma, Volume 1 by Stendhal - HTML preview

FOOTNOTES

[1]So Balzac, reading les petites mains les plus gracieuses. Stendhal's words are les petites mines, and he makes the lady a Marchesa. Balzac's quotations are not, as a rule, textually accurate, but his analysis of the story is admirable.

C. K. S. M.

[2]What a phrase, indeed. But it is the Duchessa, not Mosca, who gives this advice to Fabrizio, at Piacenza, and it is the party "opposite to the one he has served all his life" that he is to be flung into.

C. K. S. M.

[3]i.e., Chapters I and II. C. K. S. M.

[4]This sentence is left unfinished at the foot of a page, the next page beginning with "While composing," etc.

[5]This seems to refer to the Chartreuse. C. K. S. M.

[6]By the local custom, borrowed from Germany, this title is given to every son of a Marchese; Contino to the son of a Conte, Contessina to the daughter of a Conte, etc.

[7]The speaker is carried away by passion; he is rendering in prose some lines of the famous Monti.

[8]Silvio Pellico has given this name a European notoriety: it is that of the street in Milan in which the police headquarters and prisons are situated.

[9]See the curious Memoirs of M. Andryane, as entertaining as a novel, and as lasting as Tacitus.

[10]In Italy, young men with influence or brains become Monsignori and prelati, which does not mean bishop; they then wear violet stockings. A man need not take any vows to become Monsignore; he can discard his violet stockings and marry.

[11]Pier-Luigi, the first sovereign of the Farnese family, so renowned for his virtues, was, as is generally known, a natural son of His Holiness Pope Paul III.