by which he is generally known was in the neighbourhood of Poitiers, around the village of Vendeuvre, where he built himself a vast chateau, destroyed at the close of the eighteenth century.  Some fragments of the sculptured work adorning it, remarkable for their elegance of design and delicacy of workmanship, are in the Poitiers Museum.  It is not unlikely that the incidents related in Tale IV. occurred at this chateau; or else at that of Oiron, another domain of the Gouffiers, between Loudun and Bressuire.  In the chapel of Oiron were buried Bonnivet, his mother, his brother Artus, and his nephew Claud.  Their tombs, large marble mausoleums of Italian workmanship, surmounted by recumbent statues, were opened and mutilated by the Huguenots in 1568, when the bones they contained were scattered to the winds.  Bon-nivet’s statue is probably the most damaged of the four.  The chateau of Oiron, with its marble staircases, quaint frescoes, sculptured medallions, &c, testifies to the great wealth possessed by the Gouffier family, and justifies the cynical motto assumed by Bonnivet’s nephew:  “Others have beaten the bushes, but we have the birds.”—­Ed.

One day during the carnival, when he was among the maskers, he danced with one of the most beautiful and bravely attired ladies to be found in the whole city; and whenever a pause occurred in the music of the hautboys, he did not fail to address her with love speeches, in which he excelled all others.  But she (3) having no favourable reply to give him, suddenly checked his discourse by assuring him that she neither loved nor ever would love any man but her husband, and that he must by no means expect that she would listen to him.

3 This lady may perhaps be the “Sennora Clerice” (Clarissa) of whom Brantome writes as follows in his Capitaines Francois:—­“It was Bonnivet alone who advised King Francis to cross the mountains and follow M. de Bourbon, and in this he had less his master’s advantage and service at heart than his desire to return and see a great and most beautiful lady of Milan, whom he had made his mistress some years previously....  It is said that this was the ’Sennora Clerice,’ then accounted one of the most beautiful ladies of Italy....  A great lady of the time, from whom I heard this story, told me that he, Bonnivet, had commended this lady Clerice to the King so highly as to make him desirous of seeing and winning her; and this was the principal cause of this expedition of the King’s.”—­Lalanne’s OEuvres de Brantome, vol. ii. p. 167-8.—­L.

The gentleman, however, would not take this answer for a refusal, and continued to press his suit with great energy until mid-Lent.  But he found her still firm in her declaration that she would love neither himself nor another, which he could not believe, however, seeing how ill-favoured was her husband, and how great her own beauty.  Convinced that she was practising dissimulation, he resolved, on his own side, to have recourse to deception, and accordingly he ceased to urge his suit, and inquired so closely concerning her manner of life that he discovered she was in love with a most discreet and honourable Italian gentleman.