musette a small bag of canvas or leather for toilet articles, etc., worn suspended from a shoulder strap.
Mürren alpine resort.
woodcock a migratory European shorebird, with short legs and a long bill: it is hunted as game.
St. Estephe a type of wine.
purée de marron chestnuts ground or mashed until smooth.
zabaione a frothy dessert or sauce made of eggs, sugar, and wine, typically Marsala, beaten together over boiling water.
Hotel Cavour a fancy Milanese hotel.
gout a hereditary form of recurrent, acute arthritis with swelling and severe pain, resulting from a disturbance of uric acid metabolism and characterized by an excess of uric acid in the blood and deposits of uric acid salts usually in the joints of the feet and hands, especially in the big toe.
"But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near" Lieutenant Henry quotes from "To His Coy Mistress," a lyric poem by Andrew Marvell (see below). The reference to the poem itself, about a woman who is sexually unavailable, is ironic, considering all of Henry and Catherine's premarital sexual activity. But the lines themselves are consistent with the sense of doom that pervades the novel.
Marvell Andrew Marvell (1621–78), English poet.
