Part 47

◆Christine de Lorraine, daughter of Duke Charles, married to Ferdinand I. de Medici. This young princess had arrived in Italy adorned in her rich French gowns, which she soon cast off in favor of Italian fashions. This concession quickly made her a favorite. It was at the wedding of Christine that the first Italian operas were performed. (Litta, Medici di Firenze, IV., tav. xv.)

P. 171:

◆Brantôme is very likely thinking of Princess de Condé, whom Pisani brought before the Parliament, which acquitted her.

P. 174–175:

◆Probably an allusion to Mme. de Simiers and not to Marguerite de Valois, as Lalanne thinks. More tenacious if not more constant than the princess, Louise de Vitry, Lady de Simiers, lost successively Charles d’Humières at Ham, Admiral de Villars at Dourlens, and the Duke de Guise, whom she deeply loved and who gave her so little in return; this does not include Count de Randan, who died at Issoire, and others of less importance. When she reached old age, old Desportes alone remained for her. He had been her first lover, a poet, whom she had forgotten among her warriors; but it was much too late for both of them.

◆Brantôme is mistaken; it is Seius and not Séjanus.

P. 177:

◆Théodore de Bèze, the Reformer; born at Vézelais, in the Nivernais, 1519. Author, scholar, jurist and theologian. Died 1595.

P. 178:

◆All the satirical authors agree in charging Catherine de’Medici with this radical change of the old French manners. It would be juster to think also of the civil wars in Italy, which were not without influence upon the looseness of the armies, and, therefore, upon the whole of France.

P. 179:

◆It is the 91st epigram of Bk. I.

P. 180:

◆Isabella de Luna, a famous courtesan mentioned by Bandello.

◆Cardinal d’Armagnac was Georges, born in 1502, who was successively ambassador in Italy and archbishop of Toulouse, and finally archbishop of Evignon.

P. 181:

◆Quotation badly understood. Crissantis, in the Latin verse, is a participle and not a proper noun. (Cf. Juvenal, sat. iv.)

◆Filènes, from Philenus, a courtesan in Lucian.

◆The line should read,

Ipsa Medullinæ frictum crissantis adorat.

P. 184:

◆Brantôme seems to speak of himself; yet he might merely have played the side rôle of confidant in the comedy.

P. 187:

◆Brantôme refers to the Dialogue de la beauté des dames. Marguerite d’Autriche is not (as he says) the Duchess de Savoie, who died in 1530, but the natural daughter of the Emperor; she married Alessandro de’Medici, and later Ottavio Farnese.

P. 189:

◆The famous Church of Brou, at Bourg, was built in 1511–36 by the beautiful Marguerite of Austria, wife of Philobert II., le Beau, Duke of Savoy, in fulfilment of a vow made by Marguerite of Bourbon, her mother-in-law. It contains the magnificent tombs of Marguerite herself, her husband and mother-in-law. Celebrated in a well-known poem, “The Church of Brou,” of Matthew Arnold.

P. 190:

◆Jean de Meung, the poet (nicknamed Clopinel on account of his lameness), was born at the small town of Meung-sur-Loire in the middle of the XIIIth Century. Died at Paris somewhere about 1320. His famous Roman de la Rose was a continuation of an earlier work of the same name by Guillaume de Lorris, completed and published in its final form by Jean de Meung.