Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/37

Rh, fuient employees a faire le service." Other contemporaries likewise report a great deal of the immorality prevailing at the court. Thus we have curious reports regarding the pregnancy of Limeuil, who had her birth-throes in the queen's wardrobe in Lyon (1564), the father being the Prince of Conde. Likewise, Johanna d'Albret warns her son, later Henri IV., against the corruption of the court. When she later visited him in Paris she was horrified at the immorality at the court of her daughter-in-law, later Queen Margot, who lived in the "most depraved and dissolute society." (Brantôme pretended that he was a relative of hers, and pronounced a panegyric upon her in his Rodomontades which was answered in her memoirs dedicated to him.) He did not feel it his mission to be a Savonarola. To his great regret this "culture" came home to him in his own family. He had more and more cause to be dissatisfied with his youngest sister, Madeleine. The wicked life of this lady-in-waiting filled him with fury. He paid her her share and drove her from the house.

Certain Puritans among the historians find fault with Brantôme for having uncovered the "abominations" at the courts of the Valois. His vanity may have led him to make many modifications in the events, but most of these are probably due to his desire to be entertaining. In his dedication to the Rodomontades Espagnoles he addresses Queen Margot as follows: "Bien vous dirai-je, que ce que j'escrits est plein de verite; de ce que j'ay veu, je l'asseure, di ce que j'ay scen et appris d'autray, si on m'a trompe je n'en puis mais si tiens-je pourtant beaucoup de choses de personnages et de livres tres-veritables et dignes de foy." Nevertheless, his method was very primitive. In his descriptions of personalities, he had a thread on which he could string up his recollections, so that there was at least some consistency. In the book of Fair and Gallant Ladies the individual fact is of less importance and has more of symbolic value. They are pictures of the time composed of a confusing multitude of anecdotes.