Part 42

◆Tancred, one of the chief heroes of the First Crusade, was the son of Odo the Good, of Sicily. Date of his birth is uncertain; he died 1112. Type of the gallant soldier and adventurer and the “very perfect, gentle knight.”

◆Philippe I.—1060–1108.

◆See Guillaume de Tyr, liv. XI., who tells this anecdote about Tancrède. Bertrade d’Anjou, the wife of Foulques, had been carried off by Philip I., to whom she bore, among other children, Cécile, who married Tancrède.

◆Compare this Albanian savagery with the story of Councillor Jean Lavoix, who lived with the wife of an attorney named Boulanger. The wife having decided to discontinue that liaison, the Councillor grew so furious that he caused her to be slashed and disfigured, although he could not get her nose cut off. He was pardoned after having paid his judges. The following song was written about him:

Chasteauvillain, Poisle et Levois, Seront jugez tous d’une voix Par un arrest aussi leger Que fust celluy de Saint-Leger. Car le malheur est tel en France Que tout se juge par la finance.

(Bib. Nat., ms. français, 22563, f^o 101.)

P. 70:

◆See the Annales d’Aquitaine, f^o 140 v^o.—Jeanne de Montal, married to Charles d’Aubusson, lord of La Borne. This Charles had had a liaison with the prioress of Blessac, who bore him four children. He was tried for theft and robbery in the convents of his vicinity, and hanged, February 23, 1533. (Anselme, t. V., p. 835.) A genealogy by Pierre Robert states precisely what Brantôme records here.

◆See Brantôme in the Lalanne edition, t. VIII., p. 148. There must be some mistake here. Jacques d’Aragon, the titular king of Majorca, died in an expedition in 1375, according to the Art de verifier les dates.

◆Charles VII. (surnamed the Victorious), crowned at Poitiers 1422, consecrated at Rheims 1429; died 1461, the King for whom Jeanne d’Arc fought against the Burgundians and English, and who really owed his crown to her.

◆Francis I., 1515–1547.

◆Jeanne I., Queen of Naples, 1353–1381, daughter of Charles Duke of Calabria and grand-daughter of the wise King Robert of Naples.

P. 72:

◆The proverb says, the ferret. It should be the ermine, which animal is said to allow itself to be caught rather than soil itself.

◆The opinion that the female ferret would die if it did not find a male to satisfy her during the mating season was still held by naturalists at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lalanne is mistaken about the ermine, which, on the contrary, dies of the slightest contamination:

Et moi, je suis si délicate Qu’une tache me fait mourir.

(Florian, Fables, liv. III., fab. xiii.)

P. 78:

◆Nouvelle III.

◆Unhappy husbands were classified as follows:

Celluy qui, marié, par sa femme est coqu Et (qui) pas ne le sçait, d’une corne est cornu. Deux en a cestui-là qui peut dissimuler; Qui le voit et le souffre, celluy trois en porte; Et quatre cestui-là qui meine pour culler Chez lui des poursuivans. Cil qui en toute sorte Dit qu’il n’est de ceux-là, et en sa femme croid, Cinq cornes pour certain sur le front on lui void.

(Bib. Nat., ms. français 22565, f^o 41.)

P. 79:

◆It was the marriage of Marguerite of France, the Duchess de Savoie, to Emmanuel Philibert, the Duke de Savoie, which caused the army to grumble.

◆Boccaccio, Seventh tale of the second day.

◆Brantôme alludes here most likely to Marguerite of France, sister of Henri II., who was 45 when she married the Duke of Savoy.

P. 80:

◆Mlle. de Limeuil was the mistress of the Prince de Condé. During the journey of the court at Lyons, in July, 1564, she was confined in the cabinet of the queen mother, who was so furious that she had her locked up in a Franciscan monastery at Auxonne. But the Confession de Sancy and several authors of that time differ from Brantôme in saying that the child was a son and not a daughter, and died immediately after birth. The Huguenots wrote verses about the adventure; but the young lady nevertheless married an Italian, Scipion Sardini, for whom she soon forgot the Prince de Condé. Mlle. de Limeuil called herself Isabelle de La Tour de Turenne, and was Dame de Limeuil.