54 J- A. Fontaine, 



personal pronoun uie, being accompanied by a more explica- 

 tive and descriptive object upon which finally the action 

 expressed by the verb falls, yields its place to it and assumes 

 a dative case. When we say je me siiis conpe, me receives 

 entirely the action expressed by the verb ; but when we 

 specify more by adding Ic doigt, the pronoun receives the 

 action only indirectly, and consequently assumes the place of 

 an indirect object. It is, as we see, a mere change of case, 

 which does not entirely break the relation of the reflexive 

 pronoun with the verb, but still leaves the latter under the 

 indirect influence of the former ; and hence there is not a 

 sufficient ground to allow the verb to change its auxiliary. 

 Indeed, in such cases the Italian, as a rule, used to change its 

 auxiliary and take avere ; but this fact only proves that the 

 tendency towards a single type of conjugation, when a reflex- 

 ive pronoun accompanied the verb, had a more powerful sway 

 in French than in Italian. But if M. Littre's assertions that 

 the French had sacrificed the rule of the grammar for the 

 sake of euphony, and had been imposed upon with a solecism, 

 were correct, the same thing could be said of the Italian of to- 

 day, since the latter follows the same rules as the French in 

 the reflexive conjugation. This will be clearly shown later on. 

 Speaking of the supposed anomalous expression, "Jc me s?cis 

 coupe Ic doigt," M. Littre says : " Je ne sais si elle est ancienne, 

 je suis porte a croire que non, mais je n'ai la-dessus aucun 

 renseignement." I have tried to collect a certain amount of 

 material to prove that it was ancient, and as a result find 

 plenty of reflexive verbs with direct object in Livre de Job, 

 Sermons St. Bernard, Livre des Rois, Guillaume de Tyr, Join- 

 ville, Villehardouin, but none in compound tenses. But there 

 is no reason to suppose that the Old French, taking a direct 

 object in the single tenses of reflexive verbs, should have 

 avoided it in compound tenses. However, we find in Rabe- 

 lais and Montaigne so many instances of reflexive verbs 

 accompanied by a direct object in compound tenses, that it 

 is impossible not to think that the same thing had been done 

 a long time before them. 



84 



