From this point of view Pierre de l'Estoile[221] is of a higher class. He was a lawyer of rank and an indefatigable writer. Day by day he put down in his _Tablettes_ all sorts of public and private affairs, as well as literary extracts, obituary notices, and, in short, almost the entire material of a modern newspaper. Pierre de l'Estoile, much more than Brantome, is the French Pepys. Although occasionally prejudiced, the writer seems to have been acute and well-informed, and his manner of dealing with his heterogeneous materials is light and lively. [Sidenote: D'Ossat.] Of the three correspondence-writers just mentioned, though Henri himself is a vigorous and fertile writer, the most important by far is Cardinal D'Ossat. He was born in the south of France in 1536, and had not, unlike many of the diplomatist ecclesiastics of the period, the advantage of high birth. Like many of his contemporaries, he began as a lawyer and only subsequently took orders. He began diplomatic life as Secretary to the Archbishop of Toulouse, who was ambassador at Rome, and later on conducted the negotiations which led to the conversion of Henri IV. He then became Bishop of Rennes and cardinal. His letters are almost entirely devoted to subjects connected with his profession, and have always held a position as one of the earliest models of diplomatic writing. D'Ossat's style, especially in respect of its vocabulary, was long regarded as a pattern, but it has less character than that of some other sixteenth-century writers. [Sidenote: Sully.] The last two books to be named belong, in point of date, to the next century, but were written by, or for, men who were emphatically of the sixteenth. The extraordinary form of Sully's Memoirs is well known. They are neither written as if by himself, nor of him as by a historian of the usual kind. They are directly addressed to the hero in the form of an elaborate reminder of his own actions. 'You then said this;' 'his Majesty thereupon sent you there;' 'when you were two leagues from your halting-place, you saw a courier coming,' etc. It is needless to say that this manner of telling history is in the highest degree unnatural and heavy, and, after the first quaintness of it wears off, it makes the book very hard to read. It contains, however, a very large number of short memoirs and documents of all kinds, in which the elaborate farce of 'Vous' is perforce abandoned. It shows Sully as he was--a great and skilful statesman: but it does not give a pleasant idea of his character. [Sidenote: Jeannin.]