translators can have taken the trouble to read
their own work, or they surely would not
let pass some of the blunders we meet
with. In a translation of Lamartine's
_Girondins_ some courtly people are
described as figuring ``under the vaults'' of
the Tuileries instead of beneath the arched
galleries (_sous ses voutes_). This, however,
is nothing to a blunder to be found
in the _Secret Memoirs of the Court of

Louis XIV. and of the Regency_ (1824).
The following passage from the original
work, ``Deux en sont morts et on dit
publiquement qu'ils ont t empoisonns,'' is
rendered in the English translation to the
confusion of common sense as ``Two of
them died with her, and said publicly that
they had been poisoned.''

This is not unlike the bull of the young
soldier who, writing home in praise of the
Indian climate, said, ``But a lot of young
fellows come out here, and they drink
and they eat, and they eat and they drink,
and they die; and then they write home
to their friends saying it was the climate
that did it.''

Some authors have found that there is
peril in too free a translation, thus Dotet