The Salt Smugglers

7 Frankfurt: Nerval traveled through Frankfurt in September 1850. A hotbed of revolutionary fervor in 1848 — the Frankfurt Parliament was the first such freely elected body in the history of Germany — the city was at that point already experiencing the repressive repercussions of the Prussian occupation of Hesse.

7 Hecker the revolutionary: Karl Franz Hecker, leader of the republican left in Baden.

7 Robert Blum: German writer and politician involved in Kossuth’s Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and later executed by the Austrians. In October 1849, Nerval had contributed to a similar “revolutionary” almanac, Le Diable rouge. Entitled “Les Prophètes rouges,” his essay sympathetically surveyed the work of such socialist illuminati as Lamennais, Mickiewicz, Leroux, Proudhon, and Considérant.

8 Riancey amendment: Voted into law on July 16, 1850, it imposed a stamp tax of one centime per copy on any newspaper featuring a serial novel in its pages. Ostensibly intended to protect the interests of booksellers and to safeguard the morality of the press, the law was in fact more likely aimed at suppressing such phenomenally successful romans-feuilleton as Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris, which, in the opinion of the government, had contributed significantly to stirring up the workers’ insurrections of 1848.

8 a larger series of studies: Nerval had already published essays on the eighteenth-century figures Restif de la Bretonne, Jacques Cazotte, and Cagliostro in various newspapers and magazines. He would subsequently collect these (together with his biography of the abbé de Bucquoy) in his 1852 volume Les Illuminés [The Illuminati], subtitled The Precursors of Socialism.

8 Madame Dunoyer: Anne-Marguerite Dunoyer (1663- 1719). French woman of letters of Calvinist origin who after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes fled to Holland, where she edited an émigré newspaper and published her memoirs. The adventures of the abbé de Bucquoy are recounted in her Lettres historiques et galantes de deux dames de condition (Amsterdam, 1720), a volume which would have been readily available to Nerval but which he chose to eschew.

9 Government censorship in Vienna: Over the course of the winter of 1839-40, Nerval published a number of articles in the Viennese journal Die Allgemeine Theaterzeitung. Censorship in Metternich’s Austria (known as the China of Europe) was the most draconian on the continent, with a list of some five thousand forbidden books.

9 French newspapers: Le National and Le Charivari were journals of the opposition and Le Journal des débats and La Quotidienne semi-official government organs.

10 Camisard uprising: None of these events — all related to the various Protestant and regional uprisings following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 — is mentioned in the book.

11 M. Thiers and M. Capefigue: No doubt intended ironically. Neither of these nineteenth-century French historians was especially noted for his humor.

11 Hypatia: Neo-Platonic philosopher murdered by a Coptic mob in 415 — another instance, as Nerval notes in Les Illuminés, of Christianity’s attempt to suppress the gnostic and mystery religions of antiquity.

12 The resultant de and du: A point not lost on Gérard Labrunie, who had reinvented himself under the aristocratic pen name Gérard de Nerval.

13 various police reports of the year 1709: This collection of documents in fact exists at the Bibliothèque Nationale, though the liberties Nerval takes with it are extreme.

13 M. de Pontchartrain: Jérôme Phélypeaux, count of Pontchartrain, served as High Commissioner to the King from 1699 to 1715; the marquis d’Argenson was Lieutenant General of the police from 1697 to 1718.

14 This is not a novel: Echoes Diderot’s 1773 Short story “Ceci n’est pas un conte.”

16 in the fashion of Froissart and Monstrelet: Jean Froissart (1333?-1404?) and Enguerrand de Monstrelet (1390?- 1453?) were both authors of Chronicles.

17 that charming opera you wrote: Nerval’s opera Piquillo, coauthored with Alexandre Dumas, was performed in 1837 and starred Jenny Colon, object of his unrequited love. His “second” opera, Les Monténégrins, was produced in 1849.

18 one of my literary mentors: Charles Nodier (1780-1844), polymath, bibliophile, and author of fantastic tales.

18 an edition of Faust: Most likely the novel Faust’s Life, Deeds, and Journey into Hell (1791) by the German dramatist Klinger, which inspired Nerval’s own play on the Faust theme and the invention of printing, L’Imagier de Harlem (1851).

22 Sabory champagne: This installment of The Salt Smugglers , published on October 27, 1850, alludes to President Louis Napoléon’s review of the troops at the military camp of Sabory two weeks earlier — where he plied them with cigars, champagne, and garlic sausage, eliciting the cry “Long Live the Emperor” from a number of the regiments. General Changarnier, who vigorously protested this violation of military regulations, was subsequently relieved of his command, thus opening the way to Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état the following year.

23 as much as a representative to the National Assembly: During the Second Republic, representatives were paid twenty-five francs a day — a sum considered far too princely by many of the working-class opponents of the regime.

23 Renewed Reveries of the Greeks: A parody of Iphigenia in Tauris published in 1779.

24 Dumas’ God Disposes: Dumas’ serial novel of this title began publication in L’Événement in July 1850, costing the newspaper some twenty-one thousand francs in fines.

25 changing my political colors: The left-wing newspaper Le Corsaire published an article in its October 30, 1850, number entitled “Encore un fantaisiste qui tourne au rouge,” which accused Nerval of political opportunism. Nerval is being a bit disingenuous in his self-defense, for it would appear that he did indeed have close contacts with Jean-Louis Lingay, the minister of the interior under Louis-Philippe — who rewarded him with a secret mission to Vienna in early 1840 to indemnify him for the delays caused by the censorship of his play Léo Burckart.

25 I wrote a play: The play in question, Léo Burckart, grew out of Nerval’s travels in Germany with Alexandre Dumas in 1838-39 (an account of which he included in his 1852 travelogue Lorely, Souvenirs d’Allemagne). Loosely based on events that took place in the Rhineland in 1819 — notably the assassination in Mannheim of the reactionary political journalist and dramatist Kotzebue by the Bavarian theology student Karl Sand, and the failed assassination in Frankfurt of the prime minister Ibell by a young man named Loening — the play evokes the nationalist ferment among the secret student fraternities (or Burschenschaften) of the Young Germany movement, which led that same year to the passage of the Carlsbad Decrees imposing strict censorship on the press and instituting repressive measures against universities — measures which were revoked only during the revolutionary turmoil that swept through the German states in 1848 during the “springtime of the people.” Given the various attempts on the life of Louis-Philippe in 1835-36 — the most spectacular of which involved Giuseppe Marco Fieschi’s discharge of an “infernal machine” (composed of twenty gun barrels fired simultaneously) on the boulevard du Temple, which killed eighteen and wounded innumerable others — the censors may well have been justifiably nervous about the student conspirators represented in Léo Burckart. In late 1850, with the dictatorial star of the Prince President Louis Napoléon on the rise, the play would have lost none of its political relevance.

26 The Italian carbonari: The carbonari (or charcoal burners) were secret revolutionary societies, organized along the lines of Freemasonry, who opposed French and Austrian rule and sought the creation of a unified and independent Italy. After a series of revolutionary skirmishes in 1820-21 and 1831, they were replaced by the “Young Italy” movement led by Mazzini. France had most recently invaded Italian territory during the controversial Rome Expedition of the spring of 1849.

27 the reactionary politics of a small German court: Léo Burckart, the play’s eponymous hero, is torn between the loyalty that he owes his ruler as prime minister and the sympathies he feels toward the nationalist ideals of the young student radicals — the leader of whom, Frantz Lewald, is in love with Burckart’s neglected wife, Marguerite. Chosen by his fellow students (during the convening of the secret Saint Wehme tribunal in Act Four) to assassinate the prime minister, Frantz Lewald falters and, unable to follow through on this Oedipal scenario (which involves killing father figure Léo Burckart in order to possess his wife, Marguerite), commits suicide by turning his pistol onto himself.

27 Bocage: Pierre-François Bocage (1797-1863), one of the best-known of the boulevard actors, celebrated for his performances in Dumas’ smash hits Antony (1831) and La Tour de Nesle (1832). There is no record, however, of his ever being associated with this production of Léo Burckart. Indeed, Nerval’s entire account of his dealings with Harel’s Porte-Saint-Martin theater is a tissue of half-truths and outright fabrication — no doubt devised to heighten this comedy of errors.

28 Thiers and Guizot: Louis-Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) and François Guizot (1787-1874) both served as prime ministers during the July Monarchy.

28 Koerner: Carl Theodor Körner (1791-1813), German poet and soldier. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), German composer.

29 Vatel’s fish course: At the extravagant banquet he had prepared at the Château de Chantilly in honor of Louis XIV, the French chef François Vatel (1631-1671), distraught that the fish for the main course had not been delivered, committed suicide — at least as reported by Mme de Sévigné.

29 the theater license: In an attempt to control and monitor the space of public representation, Napoléon had in 1807 reduced the number of licensed theaters in Paris from thirty-three to eight. By 1850, the number had grown back to twenty-three, but the theater licensing requirement was not entirely abolished until 1864.

30 the scene of the Saint Wehme: Saint Wehme was a secret society founded by the Teutonic knights in Westphalia in the thirteenth century. Its original purpose had been the creation of secret tribunals in order to dispatch summary justice (usually by hanging) for crimes committed against the Church.

30 sicaires and trabans: Paid assassins and honor guards.

31 La Parisienne: Patriotic song composed by Casimir Delavigne celebrating the popular uprisings during the July Revolution of 1830.

32 the Archives contain a charming love story: Nerval apparently did consult this manuscript at the National Archives, although he relied more heavily on Jules Taschereau’s published version of it in the Revue Rétrospective (1834). The materials he later cites as existing in Compiègne, by contrast, are pure invention.

34 the Hôtel de la Cloche celebrated by Alexandre Dumas: Mentioned in his Count of Monte-Cristo (1845).

37 their caresses remained pure: Nerval here censors the straightforwardness of the original, which speaks of an easy sexuality that is far from the chaste, Platonic love he describes in the following paragraph. Angélique writes: “It would be impossible to describe all the caresses we exchanged; he did everything to me except actually take my virginity — this I managed to protect from his assaults, for he would often say to me: ‘I am sure that when I finally possess you entirely, you will immediately get with child.’”

38 the invention of printing: Nerval had published an article on the early inventors of printing (Faust, Gutenberg, Schoeffer, and Laurent Coster) in La Presse on August 26, 1850. A letter critical of the historical accuracy of this piece was written to the newspaper by a certain Auguste Bernard, a copy editor at the National Printing House. Nerval was himself an inventor of a linotype-like printing device named a “Stereograph,” for which he submitted a patent in 1844.

39 Laurent Coster: Laurens Janszoon Coster (1370-c.1440), native of Haarlem and thought by the Dutch to have invented block printing around 1430, having gotten the idea by cutting letters upon the bark of a tree and then impressing them on paper. He is the Faustian hero of Nerval’s 1851 play L’Imagier de Harlem. Nerval’s mother’s maiden name was also Laurens, which, spelled backwards — in printing everything is reversed — turns into Nerval.

39 Agis: Agesilas, according to Plutarch. The reference at the end of this parable to “a republic governed by kings” is another transparent swipe at the monarchical — or, indeed, imperial — ambitions of Louis Bonaparte.

39 La Fontaine’s “Power of Fables”: Here given in the Elizur Wright translation, Boston, 1841.

41 swindled by dead or stuffed birds: During his farcical landing at Boulogne in August 1840 — his second attempt at a coup after his failure in Strasbourg in 1836 — Louis Bonaparte had arranged for an eagle (some said a vulture) to accompany him to victory, in memory of the imperial symbol of his uncle.

41 our Parisian beards: Beards singled one out as an “artist” or political “radical.”

42 I even own some property around here: The “clos de Nerval” — the source of his pseudonym — was a small parcel of land situated in nearby Loisy, which he had inherited from his mother’s side of the family.

47 Here is one of the songs I have collected: Inspired by such German writers as Herder, Nerval began collecting old folk songs and ballads from the Valois region in 1842. His “Chansons et légendes du Valois” were published as an appendix to “Sylvie” in 1854.

55 back in the days of the League: Religious wars tore France apart during the reigns of the last Valois kings, Charles IX and Henri III (1560-89). The Catholics, led by the Guise family, formed the League and obtained Spanish support against the Protestant Henry of Navarre — who, when he became Henri IV, eventually defeated the League but was nonetheless forced to convert to Catholicism before being allowed to enter Paris in 1594 and become the first Bourbon king of France.

55 Saint Bartholomew: The traditional patron saint of many localities in the Valois. The massacre of the Huguenots occurred on Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572.

56 the battle of Senlis: Nerval borrows the theory of the fundamental racial conflict between the Franks and Gallo-Romans from the work of French historian Augustin Thierry (1795-1856). The battle of Senlis was fought in 1589.

57 she had sullied herself with child: Nerval seems to have read the expression “elle s’est gâtée d’un enfant” as meaning that she gave birth to a child. Instead, a miscarriage or abortion is probably here intended.

58 Jeanne Hachette: Distinguished herself by her heroic resistance to the Burgundians during the siege of Beauvais in 1472. This entire passage on warrior women implicitly alludes to Nerval’s own mother — who died in Silesia in 1810 while accompanying her husband’s military regiment in its retreat from Russia.

58 Salic law: Rule of succession in certain royal and noble families of Europe forbidding females and those descended in the female line to succeed to the titles or offices in the family.

62 the author of Waverley: Scott’s Waverley, initially published anonymously in 1811 and often considered the first historical novel, was so popular that he henceforth published under the heteronym “the author of Waverley.”

62 Théophile de Viau: This baroque poet (1590-1626), a frequent visitor to the castle of Chantilly, was the author of Le Bosquet de Sylvie. Nerval’s most celebrated novella — Proust’s favorite among his works — is entitled “Sylvie.”

65 the new metric system: The metric system became the law of the land on January 1, 1840.

65 the Tinguy amendment: The Tinguy amendment, added as a rider to the press laws of July 16, 1850, stipulated that “any newspaper article containing political, philosophical, or religious discussions must be signed by its author.” Prior to this law, Nerval often published his newspaper pieces anonymously or under a variety of different initials. Now journalists would be obliged to speak — and, more crucially, be legally answerable — under their own names.

65 Vitam impendere vero: In his “Letter to d’Alembert” (1758), Rousseau announces that he will henceforth take as his motto this phrase from Juvenal, variously translated as “I shall risk my life on the truth” or “I shall consecrate my life to truth.”

66 Palais-National: The Palais-Royal, rebaptized the Palais-National after the 1848 Revolution, was plundered on February 24, 1848.

66 Horace Vernet: Derided as a hack by Baudelaire in his art criticism, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was a specialist in military scenes.

67 M. Arago: The physicist and astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) was a member of the Provisional Government of 1848.

71 the prefect of the Seine: In 1850, this position was held by Jean-Jacques Berger — who had replaced Rambuteau and who would later be succeeded by Haussmann, in 1853. Nerval would appear to have moved to this address at 4 rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre around 1848. He evokes this same neighborhood near the Louvre when chronicling his “bohemian” youth on the impasse du Doyenné in his book of reminiscences, Petits châteaux de Bohême (1853). The demolition of the Louvre district also provides the subject for Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne” (first published in 1860). As his various lifts from the latter’s Voyage en Orient attest, Baudelaire was one of Nerval’s most astute readers. Could his great allegory of modernity contain unconscious reminiscences of this particular section of Les Faux Saulniers — which in the course of a few pages moves from the urban renewal of Paris to a brief glimpse of a disoriented swan?

72 This king whom I cordially detest: Nerval’s negative view of the much-beloved Henri IV reflects the animus of various liberal historians of the period who considered him to be the founder of France’s absolute and centralized monarchy — hostile to regional independence and, more importantly for Nerval, responsible for the expulsion of the Medici from the Valois. Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade evokes Henri IV’s romantic idylls with Gabrielle d’Estrées, modeled after Canto VII of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

73 the Desert: Name given to a large sandy expanse near Ermenonville — now the Mer de Sable amusement park.

74 René de Girardin: Proprietor of the domain of Ermenonville, where he hosted Rousseau during the philosopher’s final days in 1778, the Marquis René de Girardin (1755-1808) was also the author of an influential treatise on landscape gardening, De la composition des paysages (1777), whose principles he applied to the various parks on his estate. When Rousseau died, he was buried on the Isle of Poplars in the Elysium that Girardin had created on his property: his grave quickly became a pilgrimage site for literary tourists.

74 the Illuminati: In his Les Illuminés: The Precursors of Socialism (1852), Nerval gathered a series of biographical essays intended to illustrate that broad spectrum of esoteric or occult thought which he believed had provided the counter-Enlightenment illumination for the French Revolution. Among those mentioned here: the Count of Saint-Germain (1698?-1780), a colorful alchemist and spiritist well-known to the various courts of Europe, was said to have initiated the Italian magus and necromancer Alessandro Cagliostro (1743-1795) into the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry. Cagliostro would exercise an extraordinary fascination over the court of Louis XVI, where he was implicated in the celebrated Affair of the Diamond Necklace. The theories of animal magnetism and hypnotic trance therapy popularized by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) similarly enjoyed a considerable vogue in Paris just prior to the Revolution. The “School of Geneva” alludes to the first Swiss Masonic Lodge, founded in 1737.

74 all came to this castle: Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792), author of the fantastic tale Le Diable amoureux and of a famous prophecy predicting the execution of Louis XVI. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), mystical illuminist and theosophist. Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), French economist associated with the Physiocrats. Étienne de Senancour (1770-1846), author of Obermann, admired by Nerval for his pantheistic philosophy.

75 Nostradamus: French astrologer and physician (1503- 1566), author of a collection of rhymed prophecies, The Centuries (1555). In this anecdote, Nerval confuses Marie with Catherine de Médicis.

75 the doctrines of Weisshaupt and Boehme: Adam Weisshaupt (1748-1830), German founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), German mystic and student of Paracelsian philosophy.

75 Frederick William was induced to perceive a vision: Frederick William II, king of Prussia from 1786 to 1797, nephew and successor of Frederick II (Frederick the Great), member of the European coalition against the French Republic. Both he and his prime ministers were Rosicrucians.

75 the Prince of Anhalt: Nerval nods: it was Field Marshal Blücher (1742-1819).

76 Gessner: Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), Swiss author of the widely imitated collections of bucolic poetry, Idylls (1756 and 1772).

76 Roucher . . . Delille: Antoine Roucher (1745-1794), minor didactic poet. Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), author of descriptive landscape poetry.

78 Ver — or Eve: Anagrams of Rêve — dreamland.

80 They were in fact Templars: In Les Illuminés, Nerval argues that the Templars’ attempts to syncretize Christian doctrines with Oriental spiritual traditions and the mystery cults of Antiquity provided the eventual basis for Freemasonry, which in turn prepared the French Revolution.

81 a play . . . about the death of Rousseau: This madcap scenario was cobbled together out of various legends surrounding the death of Rousseau: Corancez had come up with the Wertherian suicide by pistol, whereas Mme de Staël had opted for the more Socratic hemlock diluted in bowl of café au lait. In his 1821 book Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, V. D. Musset-Pathay also attempted to argue — against the eyewitness testimony to the contrary offered by Rousseau’s patron René de Girardin and his common-law wife, Thérèse — for Rousseau’s suicide.

81 Mme d’Épinay: Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles d’Épinay (1726-1783), French writer known for her liaisons with Rousseau and the Baron von Grimm — as well as for her close acquaintanceship with the philosophers Diderot, d’Alembert, and d’Holbach — who Rousseau, toward the end of his life, deliriously imagined were leagued against him in a “plot” or organized conspiracy. At her Château de la Chevrette in the valley Montmorency, Mme d’Épinay had supplied a home for Rousseau in 1756, which she named the Hermitage, but during the years 1757 to 1759, She paid long visits to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire, thus earning her the jealous enmity of Rousseau.

81 Mme d’Houdetot: Elisabeth-Françoise-Sophie de la Live de Bellegarde (1730-1813), wife of the count d’Houdetot, and subsequently mistress of Saint-Lambert. Rousseau met her at the Hermitage through her sister-in-law, Mme d’Épinay, and fell head over heels in love with her. Book Nine of his Confessions describes how he sublimated this impossible passion into the plot of his best-selling novel of 1761, La Nouvelle Héloïse — with the love triangle that existed between himself, Mme d’Houdetot, and Saint-Lambert now transformed into the fictional relationship of St. Preux, Julie, and M. de Wolmar.

81 Grimm: Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (1723- 1807), German-born encyclopedist and correspondent of many of the great sovereigns and courts of Europe. Originally a close friend of Rousseau, who introduced him to Mme d’Épinay at Montmorency; their resultant love affair aroused the animosity of the Swiss philosopher.

81 Thérèse: Thérèse Levasseur (?-1801), semi-literate seamstress and common-law wife of Rousseau, to whom she may have borne as many as five children, all of whom were given away to foundling homes between 1746 and 1752. After Rousseau’s death in 1778, she became the sole heiress of all his belongings, including his manuscripts and royalties, and married the valet Jean-Henri Bally the following year.

82 Émile: Rousseau’s treatise on education, Émile, was banned or burned upon its publication in Paris and Geneva in 1762 because of its controversial section including the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.”

82 his Armenian outfit: Rousseau explains in his Confessions just why he adopted the loose flowing robes of this “Armenian” outfit: the wearing of trousers irritated his genitals, causing him to urinate too frequently.

82 his herbals . . . and some periwinkles: During the years he spent under the maternal tutelage of Mme de Warens (1699-1762) at Les Charmettes in 1735-36, Rousseau learned the rudiments of botany. He describes foraging for plants for his herbals in his posthumous Reveries of a Solitary Walker. His discovery of the mnemonic talisman of the periwinkle — or pervenche — provides a classic Proustian madeleine moment in Book Six of his Confessions.

83 Ten-day hiatus: No installments of Nerval’s feuilleton appeared in Le National between November 23 and December 6. In its place, this editorial notice was inserted: “Desirous to provide our readers at long last with the HISTORY OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY, M. Gérard de Nerval wishes to devote all his time to the pursuit of his elusive hero. We respect his prerogatives as a historian and therefore suspend the course of his narrative until such a day as he will have laid hands on the book in question — which will no doubt soon cease to evade the perseverance of his research.”

84 The Dream of Polyphile: I.e., Polyphilo Hypnerotomachia (1499) by the Venetian neo-Platonist Francesco Colonna.

86 the celebrated Augusta Suessonium: Founder of the Merovingian dynasty, Clovis (c.466-511), defeated the Roman legions at Soissons in 486.

87 Lucrèce Borgia: Melodramatic historical drama by Victor Hugo (1838).

88 Merlinus Coccaius: Pseudonym of the Italian poet Teofilo Folengo (1496-1544), whose macaronic burlesques of chivalric romances prefigure Cervantes. The first-century authors Petronius and Lucian round out this Bakhtinian tradition of the “dialogical” novel.

89 Facilis descensus Averni: Aeneid, VI, 126: “It is easy to descend into Avernus.”

89 these lovely lines by Chénier: André-Marie Chénier (1762-1794), French poet and martyr who was imprisoned at Saint-Lazare in 1794 on trumped-up charges; accused of having participated in a prison conspiracy, he was guillotined as a subversive the same year. Nerval quotes (loosely) from one of his Odes.

89 Prince Eugène was scoring successes: François-Eugène, Prince of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), French-born military commander who, rejected by King Louis for service in the French army, transferred his loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy. During the War of the Spanish Succession, in partnership with the Duke of Marlborough, he secured victories against the French on the fields of Blenheim, Oudenaarde, and Malplaquet.

89 the words of a folk song: I.e., “Marlborough s’en va’t-en guerre” (also known as “Mort et convoi de l’invincible Marlborough”), sung to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

89 revocation of the Edict of Nantes: The Edict of Nantes was issued in 1598 by Henri IV to guarantee the Calvinist Protestants of France their rights and to bring the wars of religion to an end. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict and declared Protestantism illegal, thus creating an exodus to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, and the French colonies of North America. The Huguenots of the Cévennes region of south-central France, known as the Camisards, raised an insurrection against the persecution of Protestants, which lasted on and off from 1702 to 1715.

90 Mme de Maintenon: Françoise d’Aubigné Scarron (1635- 1719), morganatic second wife of Louis XIV — though her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted to. Deeply pious, she advised the king on domestic and foreign policy, while encouraging his religious devotion.

90 the battle of Hochstedt: August 13, 1704: Prince Eugène and Marlborough defeat the army of Louis XIV.

90 Where was he coming from?: Compare the celebrated opening paragraph of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste: “How had they met? By chance, like everybody. What were their names? Why do you care? Where were they coming from? From the nearest point. Where were they going? Does one ever know?”

91 salty Burgundians: During the Hundred Years’ War, the Burgundians captured the coastal fortress of Aigues-Mortes; when its inhabitants revolted in 1422 and massacred the occupiers from Burgundy, they preserved their bodies in local sea salt so that they could be placed on display as trophies.

91 the spats between Fénelon and Bossuet: François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715), Catholic theologian, poet, and writer, and advocate of Quietism, considered heretical by the pope. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), French bishop, theologian, and renowned pulpit orator. Madame Guyon (1648-1717), French mystic and practitioner of Quietism, imprisoned in the Bastille from 1695 to 1703 for having published A Short and Easy Method of Prayer.

93 La Trappe: La Trappe Abbey in Soligny-la-Trappe (Orne) is the house of origin of the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Its fourteenth abbot, Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, the stepson of Cardinal Richelieu, was the subject of an 1844 biography by Chateaubriand.

93 a number of caps: I.e., Phrygian caps, ancient symbols of liberty?

95 Ninon de Lenclos: French author, courtesan, and patron of the arts (1620-1705). Her lovers included the king’s cousin, the Great Condé, Gaspard de Coligny, and La Rochefoucauld, and in 1656, she was briefly imprisoned in a convent for her libertine ways. At the age of sixty, she was the mistress of Charles de Sévigné, son of the marquise — hence the latter’s disparaging portrait of her in her Memoirs.

100 when it comes to history: Froissart and Monstrelet, previously mentioned, were medieval authors of Chronicles. Le père Daniel (1649-1728) was Louis XIV’s royal historiographer, as was François-Eudes de Mézeray (1610- 1683); Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe (1605-1671) wrote a history of the reign of Henri IV; Alexis Monteil (1769-1850) was the author of l’Histoire des Français des divers états (1827-1844); Lamartine’s History of the Girondists appeared in 1847; Prosper de Barante (1782- 1866) was a specialist of the Dukes of Burgundy; François Guizot (1787-1874) wrote a number of histories of France and Europe in the 1820s; Louis-Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) was the author of a ten-volume History of the French Revolution (1823-1827).

103 My brothers, only God is great: The first sentence of Massillon’s funeral oration for Louis XIV.

104 Villars off in the distance: The Duke of Villars (1653-1734) was the last great general of Louis XIV; after pacifying the Cévennes, he led France to several decisive victories in Germany and Austria during the War of the Spanish Succession.

104 visiting the wings of a theater: Adapted from Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” (1846).

104 when the Bastille was finally demolished: Nerval took most of his information about the Bastille from Constantin de Renneville’s four-volume L’Inquisition française (Amsterdam and Leyden, 1724).

107 Fouquet and Lauzun: Nicolas Fouquet (1615-1680) was superintendent of finances under Louis XIV — who, displeased with his enormous wealth and extravagance, had him imprisoned at the fortress of Pignerol in 1665, where he died fifteen years later. The Duke of Lauzun (1633-1723), a favorite of Louis XIV, was imprisoned for ten years, first at the Bastille and then at Pignerol, after a passionate romance with the king’s cousin Mlle de Montpensier.

108 the performances at Saint-Cyr: Founded by Mme de Maintenon in 1685, this school for the daughters of impoverished noblemen was also the scene of the performances of Racine’s late Christian dramas Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691).

108 the existing inscription: The Latin reads “The College of Clermont of the Society of Jesus,” which was changed to “The College of Louis the Great.”

120 J.-B. Rousseau: Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671-1741), no relation to Jean-Jacques, was considered one of the premier poets of his age.

121 Heinsius: Antoine Heinsius (1640-1720); the Dutch title is the equivalent of a prime minister.

122 d’Holbach and La Mettrie: The Baron d’Holbach (1723- 1789), French encyclopedist and early proponent of materialism in his 1770 Système de la nature. Julian Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751), best known for his atheistic L’Homme machine of 1748.

122 the king of Sweden: Charles XII, who ruled Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He was victorious over the Russians at Narva — and not, as Nerval writes (following the abbé de Bucquoy), Nerva — but then was routed by Peter the Great at Poltava in the Ukraine, before taking refuge at Bender, in Turkey. Quintus Curtius was a Roman historian who wrote a ten-volume biography of Alexander the Great.