was joking, or wished to deceive him or to have him whipped.  However, she soon showed him so many signs of the fire and fever of love, saying to him that she wished to tutor him and make a man of him, that he at last realised that it was not a jest.  Their love lasted for a long time, both whilst he was a page and afterwards, until at length he had to go upon a long journey, when she replaced him by a big, fat abbot.  This is the same story that one finds in the Nouvelles du Monde Advantureux by a valet of the Queen of Navarre [Antoine de St. Denis], in which one sees the abbot insult this same John de Saintre who was so brave and valiant, and who right speedily and liberally paid back my lord the abbot in his own coin....  So you see it is no new thing for ladies to love pages.  What inclinations some women have, they will willingly take any number of lovers but they want no husband!  All this is through love of liberty, which they deem such a pleasant thing.  It seems to them as though they were in Paradise when they are not under a husband’s rule.  They have a fine dowry and spend it thriftily, they have all their household affairs in hand, receive their income, everything passing through their hands; and instead of being servants they are mistresses, select their own pleasures and favourites, and amuse themselves as much as they like.”—­Lalanne’s OEuvres de Brantome, vol. xi. pp. 703-6.

B. (Tale XXV., Page 131.)

Baron Jerome Pichon’s elucidations of this story, as given by him in the Melanges de la Societe des Bibliophiles Francais, 1866, may be thus summarised:—­

The advocate referred to in the tale is James Disome, who Mezeray declares was the first to introduce Letters to the bar, though this, to my mind, is a very hazardous assertion.  Disome was twice married.  His first wife, Mary de Rueil, died Sept. 17, 1511, and was buried at the Cordeliers church; he afterwards espoused Jane Lecoq, daughter of John Lecoq, Counsellor of the Paris Parliament, who held the fiefs of Goupillieres, Corbeville and Les Porcherons, where he possessed a handsome chateau, a view of which has been engraved by Israel Silvestre.  John Lecoq’s wife was Magdalen Bochart, who belonged like her husband to an illustrious family of lawyers and judges.  Their daughter Jane, who is the heroine of the tale, must have been married to James Disome not very long after the death of the latter’s first wife, for her intrigue with Francis I. originated prior to his accession to the throne (1515).  This is proved by the tale, in which Disome is spoken of as being the young prince’s advocate.  Now none but the Procurors and Advocates-General were counsel to the Crown, and Disome held neither of those offices.  He was undoubtedly advocate to Francis as Duke de Valois, and, from certain allusions in the tale, it may be conjectured that he had been advocate to Francis’s father, the Count of Angouleme.