Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume I.djvu/399

Rh : The Cardinal de Lorraine, Cardinal du Perron, and others, had been already represented in the same way along with Catherine de Medici, Mary Stuart and the Duchesse de Guise, in two paintings mentioned in the Légende du Cardinal de Lorraine, fol. 24, and in the Réveille-Matin des Français, pp. 11 and 123.

P. 42: I agree with Lalanne that this prince was no other than the Duke d'Alençon. As to the fable of the coupling of the lions, it came from an error of Aristotle, which was repeated by most naturalists until the eighteenth century.


 * Ronsard the poet was born 1524, being the son of Louis de Ronsard, sieur de la Poissonnière, an officer in the household of King Francis I., and died 1586. He enjoyed an immense reputation in his lifetime, and was the favourite poet of Mary Queen of Scots. Her lover, the unfortunate Chastelard, read his Hymne de la mort on the scaffold, and refused any other book or confessor to prepare him for death. Originator and leading member of the famous Pleïade of Poets.

P. 46: He was a Florentine, Luigi di Ghiaceti, who had grown rich by negotiating the taxes with the king. He married the beautiful Mlle. d'Atri, and to please her he had bought for 400,000 francs the estate of Chateauvilain. Mme. de Chateauvilain was a model of virtue, if Brantôme is to be believed; but we wonder, fully agreeing with the author of the notes to the Journal de Henri III., where this lady could have acquired her virtue—was it at the court or at her husband's estate? Besides this gallery of pictures which is mentioned here, Louis Adjecet (the French form for Luigi Ghiaceti) had mistresses with whom he indulged in the low appetites of rich upstarts. He was killed in 1593 by an officer; and his wife withdrew to Langres, where she lived with her children.

P. 47: Ariosto, Orlando furioso, canto XLII., stanza 98.

P. 47: Very likely Bernardin Turissan. Brantôme is perhaps referring to the Ragionamento della Nanna, printed in Paris in 1534, without the name of the publisher. The peggio must have been one of those infamous Italian books which the noblemen of the court wrangled over. The Nanna was well known at the French court