[Author's note]

   Can one not see as a definitive article for an ideal dictionary (and I pity those who would see an epigram in this article) in the recent study devoted to the ravishing casket exhibited by Mlle Lemaire. This astonishing litany of quotations from de Montaigne, Lesage, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, in which reappear like a refrain the two words that it effects to define and illustrate, "box" and "casket", with examples both well-known and forgotten that are destined to fix and glorify each one of them: "the casket of Cypselus deposited in the temple of Juno at Olympia", "the casket in which Nero offered his first beard to Venus Genetrix", "the casket containing the French archives that Philippe VI was entrusted to take to Crécy", "the casket containing the jewels of Charles the Bold that the Swiss seized at Morat" (and I could go on, and they are not the most significant ones) does that not furnish a truly precious contribution to the word Box and the word Casket? This learning is in any case thrown away with an absence of pedantry that is sufficient to affirm the type of collection in which it has appeared: Les Mondes (June 1905 issue).