Note 138 — Chapter VI

This is how Fustel de Coulanges condemns this practice: "I am not speaking of pretenders to learning who quote second-hand, and at most take the trouble to verify whether the phrase they have seen quoted really occurs in the passage indicated. To verify quotations is one thing and to read texts quite another, and the two often lead to opposite results" (Revue des questions historiques, 1887, vol. i.). See also (L'Alleu et le domaine rural, pp. 171-98) the lesson given to M. Glasson on the theory of the community of land: forty-five quotations are studied in the light of their context, with the object of proving that none of them bears the meaning M. Glasson attributed to it. We may also compare the reply: Glasson, Les Communaux et le domaine rural a l'époque franque, Paris, 1890.