Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society

[Page 29]


Figure 10: Some verses from the song "Qu'une bâtarde de catin," taken from the abbé Guyard by the police when they frisked him in the Bastille. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 11690, fols. 67-68, 1749.

Parisians heard. Of course, the sounds themselves disappeared into the air 250 years ago, and they cannot be duplicated exactly today. But a series of musical "keys," such as "La clef du Caveau" in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, contain the actual music to the tunes cited in the chansonniers.47 I am incapable of

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