can anyone translate some French?

[lobelia321]

Hello, amazingly knowledgeable and international Flist! I am stumped on a particular sentence that I'm trying to translate from French into English, and I wonder if anybody could help? (Even if you translated it into German for me, that would be good.)

Que l'on ne se récrie point si Regnault s'est ingénié à la choisir les teintes les plus gaies pour peindre une scène aussi lugubre

It is the bit in bold that I am unsure about.

Thank you!! :-)

Comments

[samdonne.livejournal.com]

It is the bit in bold that I am unsure about.

That's because the bit in bold isn't written in any French you'll hear spoken on the street of Paris. "Récrier" is pretty much out of use.

It translates as: "One should not become indignant that" or "one should not get annoyed that" or "There is no need to decry the fact that"...

It's hard to work out the exact nuance without the context of the excerpt.

Hope that helps.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This helps enormously, thanks so much! It is a text from the 1870s so no wonder it's not what one hears in Paris today. I had thought it might be something like 'one does not protest' or 'one is not amazed' but was not sure if the author praised or dismissed.

Thank you!! *hands you chocolates* :-)