Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/334

320  de la Mort de Descartes, part in verse, part in prose; the latter, l'Ombre de Descartes. . well, and employed herself in making copies of her father's works, which were often mistaken for originals. She was likewise a musician; played on all instruments, but particularly excelled on the harpsichord. 1562, her father married her to Horace Farnese, duke de Castres, second son of the duke of Parma, whom the king protected against the emperor; but he dying in six months, Diana, then fourteen, remained a widow three years, when her hand was offered to Francis de Montmorenci, the eldest son of the constable of France: preoccupied by another passion, the young man resisted alike the entreaties and menaces of his father, and married the object of his first love, although a law had already declared such an union invalid. The constable applied to the ecclesiastical authority; but, before sentence was pronounced, a sudden change took place in the heart of his son; he disavowed his marriage, and became the husband of Diana in 1557.

Diana acceded to the measure only in obedience to her