[256] This lady is said to have been Madame Fleurion dʼArmenonville, daughter of a clothier, whose husband was keeper of the seals and _directeur des finances_. [257] Those men were the so-called “farmers of the revenue,” nearly all of low birth, and who formerly had been in some trade or business. See page 136, note 2, and page 137, § 15. [258] Little, silly, ugly rich men were not more rare in our authorʼs time than they are at present; but the commentators will have it that the Marquis de Gouverney and the Duke de Ventadour were meant. [259] M. de Saint-Pouange, a relative of the ministers Colbert, Le Tellier, and Louvois, and the latterʼs principal secretary, is meant. [260] Nearly all the great lords had Swiss doorkeepers. Petit-Jean, in Racineʼs comedy _Les Plaideurs_, says also: “Il mʼavait fait venir dʼAmiens pour être Suisse.” [261] The “Keys” mention several people for Clitiphon, such as M. le Camus, _lieutenant-civil_, or his brother the cardinal, or another brother who was _maître des requêtes_. [262] In the original there is a play on the word _rare_ which cannot be rendered in English. [263] This seems to refer to Platoʼs “Timæus” and his “Phædo.” [264] Jupiter is the largest and Saturn the second largest planet of our solar system. The celebrated Dutch natural philosopher Huyghens van Zuylichem (1629-1695), who discovered the fourth satellite of Saturn and proved the existence of its ring, lived in Paris from 1666 till 1681, and may have met La Bruyère. [265] The original has _trivial_, from the Latin _trivialis_ and _trivium_, hence the meaning of exposed to the public gaze, “perceptible.” [266] By these initials are meant _partisans_, a name given to the farmers-general of the revenue. Until 1726, these persons obtained in France, for a fixed money payment, the right of collecting one or more of the public taxes. This system was first inaugurated by Sully (1560-1641), the able finance-minister of Henri IV., out of necessity, in order to raise money; and was continued for more than two hundred years, and the cause of many arbitrary measures and great oppression. The number of these _fermiers-généraux_ was first forty and afterwards sixty, but there were a goodly number of _sous-fermiers_ and many other agents, who were all practically irresponsible. In 1726, a company of capitalists undertook the collection of the greater part of the kingʼs taxes, which was called the _fermes-générales_ or _unies_, and lasted till the first French Revolution. The _ministre des finances_, a name only first given in 1795, was, in the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth century, called _surintendant des finances_, and from 1661 till 1791 _contrôleur-général des finances_.