[34] Isabeau de Baviere, Queen of Charles VI.

[35] Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, second son of William, and of Anne, the daughter of Maurice, Elector of Saxony.

[36] Marie de Medicis was the daughter of Francis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and of Jane, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand.

[37] Louise-Marguerite de Lorraine was the daughter of Henri, Duc de Guise, surnamed le Balafre, and of Catherine of Cleves, subsequently Duchesse de Nemours.  She was celebrated alike for her extreme beauty, her brilliant wit, and her great intellect.  She wrote admirably for that age, and was the author of the Histoire des Amours du Grand Alcandre, and of some Court Chronicles, which she published under the patronymic of Dupilaust.  Mademoiselle de Guise married Francois, Prince de Conti, son of the celebrated Louis, Prince de Conde, who was killed at Jarnac.

[38] Catherine de Lorraine, daughter of Charles, Duc de Mayenne, and of Henriette de Savoie-Villars, who became in February 1599 the wife of Charles de Gonzague, Duc de Nevers, and subsequently Duke of Mantua.  She died on the 8th of March 1618, at the age of thirty-three years; and was consequently, at the period referred to in the text, only seventeen years old.

[39] Anne, daughter and heiress of Charles, last Duc d’Aumale, by whom the duchy was transferred to the house of Savoy.

[40] Mademoiselle de Longueville was the sister of Henri d’Orleans, first Duc de Longueville.

[41] Catherine de Rohan, second daughter of Rene II, Vicomte de Rohan, and of Catherine, the daughter and heiress of Jean de Parthenay, Seigneur de Soubise.  When she had subsequently become the wife of the Duc de Deux-Ponts, Henry IV was so enamoured of her as to make dishonourable proposals, to which she replied by the memorable answer:  “I am too poor, Sire, to be your wife, and too well-born to become your mistress.”

[42] Diane de Luxembourg, who, in 1600-1, gave her hand to Louis de Ploesqueler, Comte de Kerman, in Brittany.

[43] Mademoiselle de Guemenee was the daughter of Louis de Rohan, Prince de Guemenee, first Duc de Montbazon.

[44] Sully, Mem. vol. iii. pp. 162-174.

[45] Denys de Marquemont, Archbishop of Lyons, and subsequently cardinal (1626).  He did not, however, long enjoy this dignity, to obtain which he had exerted all his energies, as he died at the close of the same year.  He was a truckling politician, and an ambitious priest.

[46] Arnaud d’Ossat was born in 1536 at Cassagnaberre, a small village of Armagnac, near Auch.  His parents lived in great indigence during his infancy, and at nine years of age he became an orphan, totally destitute.  He was placed as an attendant about the person of a young gentleman of family, whose studies he shared with such success that, from the fellow-student of his patron, he became his tutor.  After some time