Part 40

P. 32:

◆Septimius Severus, Emperor from A. D. 193 to 211. He was a great general and conducted successful campaigns in Britain, where he died,—at York.

P. 33:

◆Philippe Auguste, King of France 1180–1223. Philip Augustus repudiated Ingeburga after twenty-eight days of marriage, and married Agnes de Méranie. The censure of the church induced the king to discard the second marriage and return to Ingeburga (1201). The latter was reputed to have a secret vice which greatly angered the king.

P. 34:

◆Marguerite, daughter of the Archduke Maximilian, whom Charles VIII. rejected in order to marry Anne of Brittany (1491). Louis XII. turned away Jeanne in order to marry the widow of Charles VIII.

◆Charles VIII., 1483–1498, of the House of Valois.

◆Louis XII., successor of the last named, reigned 1498–1515, the immediate predecessor of Francis I.

P. 35:

◆Alfonso V., king of Aragon, who left maxims which were collected by Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed Panormita.

◆Twenty-second tale. M. de Bernage was equerry of King Charles VIII. and the lord of Civray, near Chenonceaux.

P. 36:

◆It is not Semiramis, but Thomyris, who, according to Justin (Bk. I.) and Herodotus (Bk. II.), thrust the head of Cyrus into a vat of blood. Xenophon says, on the contrary, that Cyrus died a natural death.

P. 40:

◆Albert de Gondy, Duke de Retz, was reputed as a practitioner of Aretino’s principles. His wife, Claudine Catherine de Clermont, deserved, perhaps wrongfully, to occupy a place in the pamphlet entitled: “Bibliothèque de Mme. de Montpensier.”

P. 41:

◆Elephantis is referred to by Martial and Suetonius as the writer of amatory works—“molles Elephantidos libelli,” but nothing is known of her otherwise. She was probably a Greek, not a Roman.

◆Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus, Emperor from A. D. 218 to 222. Born at Emesa, and originally high-priest of Elagabalus the Syrian Sun-god. After a very short reign marked by every sort of extravagant folly, he was succeeded by Alexander Severus.

◆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.

P. 45:

◆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.

Ecco un donzello a chi l’ufficio tocca Por su la mensa un bel nappo d’or fino....