[91] P. 159:

◆Proverb marking the small connection that often exists between gifts of body and good qualities of mind and character.

[92] P. 161:

◆The quotation as given in the text is mutilated and the words transposed. It should read:

 That is to say, “If you are attached solely and entirely to your wife, ... you will not be able to give a thing away, or sell or buy a thing, without her consent.”

[93] P. 164:

◆They used to say of those Italian infamies: “In Spagna, gli preti; in Francia, i grandi; in Italia, tutti quanti.”

◆Why not let Boccaccio have the responsibility of this baseness? (Decameron, Vth day, Xth story.)

[94] P. 168:

◆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.)

[95] P. 171:

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

[96] 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.

[97] P. 177:

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

[98] 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.

[99] P. 179:

◆It is the 91st epigram of Bk. I.

[100] 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.

[101] 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,

[102] P. 184:

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

[103] 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.

[104] 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.

[105] 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.

[106] P. 192:

◆Twenty-sixth Tale. It is Lord d’Avesnes, Gabriel d’Albret.

[107] P. 194:

◆Claudia Quinta (Livy XXIX, 14).

[108] P. 196:

◆Plutarch, Œuvres mêlées, LXXVII, t. II., p. 167, in the 1808 edition.

[109] P. 200:

◆The vogue of drawers dated from about 1577; three years later the hoop was in great favor and served to do away with the petticoat. Brantôme probably means that the lady discards the petticoat and wears the hoop over the drawers.

[110] P. 212:

◆The pun on raynette and raye nette cannot be reproduced in English.

[111] P. 213:

◆Etienne Pasquier, the great lawyer and opponent of the Jesuits, was born at Paris, 1529; died 1615.

◆Thibaut, sixth of the name, Comte de Champagne et Brie, subsequently King of Navarre, was born 1201. Surnamed Faiseur de Chansons from his poetic achievements. Brought up at the Court of Philippe-Auguste. The whole romance of his love for Queen Blanche of Castille is apparently apocryphal; it rests almost entirely on statements of one (English) historian, Matthew Paris. She was 16 years older than he, and is never once mentioned in his poems.

◆E. Pasquier, Œuvres, 1723, t. II, p. 38. “Which of the two,” says Pasquier, “brings more satisfaction to a lover—to feel and touch his love without speaking to her, or to see and speak to her without touching her?” In the dialogue between Thibaut de Champagne and Count de Soissons, Thibaut preferred to speak.

[112] P. 215:

◆Brantôme aims here at Queen Catherine de’Medici and her favorites.

◆Cf. Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis, c. xxi.

[113] P. 216:

◆Id., Demetrius, cap. xxvii. Brantôme is mistaken; the woman in question was Thônis.

◆Eighteenth Tale.

◆The “wheel of the nose” was a sort of “mask beard” that women wore in cold weather; it was attached to the hood below the eyes.

[114] P. 220:

◆It was François de Compeys, lord of Gruffy, who sold his estate in 1518 in order to expatriate himself.

[115] P. 221:

◆It is not three but four S’s that the perfect lover must carry with him, according to Luis Barabona (Lagrimas de Angelica, canto IV.), and these four S’s mean:

 These initial letters were much in vogue in Spain during the sixteenth century.

[116] P. 224:

◆This story was popular in Paris; it was amplified and embellished into a drama and ascribed to Marguerite de Bourgogne. Was it not Isabeau de Bavière?

◆Isabeau, or Isabelle, de Bavière, wife of the half imbecile Charles VI. of France, and daughter of Stephen II., Duke of Bavaria, was born 1371; died 1435. Among countless other intrigues was one with the Duc d’Orléans, her husband’s brother. One of her lovers, Louis de Boisbourdon, was thrown into the Seine in a leather sack inscribed Laissez passer la justice du roi. The famous story of the Tour de Nesles seems mythical.

[117] P. 225:

◆See under Buridan, in Bayle’s Dict. Critique. Compare also Villon, in his Ballade of the Dames des Temps Jadis (Fair Dames of Yore):

 (Likewise where is the Queen, who commanded Buridan to be cast in a sack into the Seine?)

[118] P. 227:

◆ Plutarch, Anthony, Chap. xxxii.

[119] P. 229:

◆ Livy, lib. XXX., cap. xv. Appien, De Rebus punicis, XXVII.

◆ Joachim du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, 1597.

◆La Vieille Courtisane (“The Old Courtesan”), fol. 449. B. of the Œuvres poét. of Joachim du Bellay, edition of 1597.

[120] P. 230:

◆This pun is difficult to explain.