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conservatory—1) A public place of instruction, designed to preserve and perfect the knowledge of some branch of science or art, esp. music. 2) The faculty and students of a school specializing in one of the fine arts.  3) a schoolhouse with special facilities for fine arts.

For no Diana do I play faun—Diana is the Roman Goddess of the hunt, the moon, forests, animals, and women in childbirth. Both a virgin goddess and an earth goddess, she was identified with the Greek Artemis. Some legends have Diana marrying Faunus, in Roman myth, woodland deity, protector of herds, and crops; identified with the Greek Pan. He was attended by fauns - mischievous creatures, half man, half goat, with short horns, pointed ears, tails and goat's feet (the counterparts of the Greek satyrs).

for Hester to win just one more “A”—Nathaniel Hawthorne novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), a novel about the adulterous Puritan Hester Prynne. Hester wore a red letter “A” sewn to the front of her dress as punishment when she had a child with a man other than her husband. Regarded as Hawthorne’s masterpiece and as one of the classics of American literature.

On the que veev—misspelling of French phrase "on the qui vive", meaning on the alert; vigilant: "a loathsome Dublin politico who is on the qui vive for ... terrorists" (Julian Moynahan). The phrase developed from the challenge of a French sentry at his lookout post to an approaching stranger, "qui vive?" meaning "long live who?", a challenge to determine a person's political sympathies. Date: 1726

pianola—a trademark kind of player piano; Pianola. a mechanically operated piano that uses a roll of perforated paper to activate the keys [syn: mechanical piano, Pianola, player piano]

Del Sarte—Francois Del Sarte (1811-1871) French teacher of acting and singing. He studied singing (1825-29) at the Paris Conservatoire and appeared as a tenor at the Opéra-Comique, but faulty training had damaged his voice. Delsarte formulated certain principles of aesthetics that he applied to the teaching of dramatic expression. He set up rules coordinating the voice with the gestures of all parts of the body. In 1839 he opened his first cours d’esthétique appliqué, and his advice was sought by many famous artists, e.g., Rachel, Henriette Sontag, and W. C. Macready. Steele MacKaye studied with him in Delsarte’s last years and brought to the United States the Delsarte system, to which he had added many of his own ideas, including elements of gymnastics. Some of Delsarte’s writings are included in the compilation Delsarte System of Oratory (1893).

Chaucer—Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) English poet regarded as the greatest literary figure of medieval England. His works include The Book of the Duchess (1369), Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385), and his masterwork, The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). This unfinished work, about 17,000 lines, is one of the major poems of world literature. In it a group of pilgrims traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket decide to pass the time by telling stories. The tales include a variety of medieval genres, from the humorous fabliau to the serious homily, and vividly depict medieval attitudes toward love, marriage, and religion.

Raballaise—misspelling of Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) One of the great comic geniuses of literature. French humanist and writer of satirical attacks on medieval scholasticism and superstition, most notably Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534). The work, in five books, is as gigantic in scope as the physical size of its heroes. Beneath its broad, often ribald humor are serious discussions of education, politics, philosophy, and religion. The breadth of Rabelais's learning and his zest for life are evident. The work was condemned by the Sorbonne, however, and Rabelais was saved from persecution for heresy only by the protection of his friend, Cardinal Jean du Bellay.