At a hunting party given by Louis XII. to the Archduke Maximilian, Mary of Burgundy, the Archduke’s wife, was killed by a fall from her horse.  The King presented his best falcons to the Archduke with a view to divert his mind and to turn his attention from the sad event, and one of the historians tells us that the bereaved husband was soon consoled:  “The partridges, herons, wild ducks, and quails which he was enabled to take on his journey home by means of the King’s present, materially lessening his sorrow.”

Falconry, after having been in much esteem for centuries, at last became amenable to the same law which affects all great institutions, and, having reached the height of its glory, it was destined to decay.  Although the art disappeared completely under Louis the Great, who only liked stag-kunting, and who, by drawing all the nobility to court, disorganized country life, no greater adept had ever been known than King Louis XIII.  His first favourite and Grand Falconer was Albert de Luynes, whom he made prime minister and constable.  Even in the Tuileries gardens, on his way to mass at the convent of the Feuillants, this prince amused himself by catching linnets and wrens with noisy magpies trained to pursue small birds.

It was during this reign that some ingenious person discovered that the words LOUIS TREIZIEME, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, exactly gave this anagram, ROY TRES-RARE, ESTIME DIEU DE LA FAUCONNERIE.  It was also at this time that Charles d’Arcussia, the last author who wrote a technical work on falconry, after praising his majesty for devoting himself so thoroughly to the divine sport, compared the King’s birds to domestic angels, and the carnivorous birds which they destroyed he likened to the devil.  From this he argued that the sport was like the angel Gabriel destroying the demon Asmodeus.  He also added, in his dedication to the King, “As the nature of angels is above that of men, so is that of these birds above all other animals.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 156.—­Dress of the Falconer (Thirteenth Century).—­Sculpture of the Cathedral of Rouen.]

At that time certain religious or rather superstitious ceremonies were in use for blessing the water with which the falcons were sprinkled before hunting, and supplications were addressed to the eagles that they might not molest them.  The following words were used:  “I adjure you, O eagles! by the true God, by the holy God, by the most blessed Virgin Mary, by the nine orders of angels, by the holy prophets, by the twelve apostles, &c.... to leave the field clear to our birds, and not to molest them:  in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”  It was at this time that, in order to recover a lost bird, the Sire de la Brizardiere, a professional necromancer, proposed beating the owner of the bird with birch-rods until he bled, and of making a charm with the blood, which was reckoned infallible.

[Illustration:  Fig. 157.—­Diseases of Dogs and their Cure.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fourteenth Century).]