person
Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon
Mac-Mahon
also: Mac-Mahon, MacMahon
French marshal and second president of the Third Republic (1873-1879), invoked by Chekhov's actors as the (misattributed) author of the maxim that the end justifies the means -- a joke about their thin education.
Reading notes
- The Wallet §37 Mac-Mahon
Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon, French marshal and president of the Third Republic (1873-1879), here invoked -- misremembered, in the actors' provincial ignorance -- as the author of the maxim that the end justifies the means.