Note 67 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 2)

Ragnar Lodbrok, thrown among serpents in a pit, defies his enemies, and bids them beware of the revenge of Woden ("Corpus Poeticum Boreale," vol. ii. pp. 341 ff.). In the prisons, at the time of the Terreur, the guillotine was a subject for chansons. The mail steamer la France caught fire, part of the cargo being gunpowder; the ship is about to be blown up; a foreign witness writes thus: "Tous jusqu'aux petits marmitons rivalisaient d'élan, de bravoure et de cette gaieté gauloise dans le péril qui forme un des beaux traits du caractère national." Baron de Hübner, "Incendie du paquebot la France," Paris, 1887. This account was written, according to what the author told me, on the day after the fire was unexpectedly mastered.