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.