[168] Caterina Selvaggio was one of the Queen’s favourite Italian waiting-women.

[169] Sully, Mem. vol. iv. pp. 93, 94.

[170] Rambure, MS. Mem. vol. i. p. 332.

[171] Capefigue, Hist, de la Reforme, de la Ligue, et du Regne de Henri IV, vol. viii. pp. 147, 148.

[172] Histoire de la Mere et du Fils, a continuation of the Memoirs of Richelieu, incorrectly attributed to Mezeray, vol. i. p. 7.

[173] Sully, Note to Memoirs, vol. iv. pp. 95, 96.

[174] Richelieu, La Mere et le Fils, vol. i. p. 7.

[175] Claude, Seigneur de la Tremouille, second Duc de Thouars, peer of France, Prince de Talmond, was born in the year 1566, and first bore arms under Francois de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier.  He embraced the reformed religion, and attached himself to the fortunes of Henri de Navarre, subsequently King of France, whom he followed to the sieges of Rouen and Poitiers, and the battle of Fontaine-Francaise; after which the King conferred upon him the rank of peer of France.  He was the brother-in-law of the Duc de Bouillon.  He died in the castle of Thouars, to which he had retired, suspected of treason, after refusing to return to Court to justify himself, on the 25th of October 1604, in his thirty-eighth year.

[176] Jean Louis de Nogaret de la Valette, Due d’Epernon, was the younger son of an old Gascon family, who sought his fortunes at the French Court under the name of Caumont.  After the death of Charles IX, he offered his services to Henri de Navarre, subsequently Henri IV; but was ultimately admitted to the intimacy of Henri III, who caused him to be instructed in politics and literature, and made him one of his mignons.  He was next created Duc d’Epernon, first peer and admiral of France, colonel-general of infantry, and held several governments.  On the death of Henri III, this ennobled adventurer once more became a partisan of his successor, and commanded the royal forces during the war in Savoy; but throughout the whole of this reign he lived in constant misunderstanding with the Court and the King, and was even suspected of the act of regicide which deprived France of her idolised monarch.  It was the Duc d’Epernon who, immediately after that event, convoked the Parliament, caused the recognition of Marie de Medicis as Regent, and formed a privy council over which he presided.  Banished by the Concini during their period of power, he reappeared at Court after their fall, but Richelieu would not permit him to hold any government office, and, moreover, deprived him of all his governments save that of Guienne.  He died in 1642.

[177] Daniel, vol. vii. p. 408.

[178] Pedro Henriques Azevedo, Conde de Fuentes.

[179] Montfaucon, vol. v. pp. 405-407.