The chief printer there at the beginning of the sixteenth century was Jean de Chauny, and our specimens of initials are from two volumes printed by him for Jehan François de Saint Nazaire, otherwise called De Ripa. The first is a small quarto with a curious ornamental title-page, _De Peste libri tres_, dedicated by the ‘celeberrimus atque acutissimus’ author to the citizens of Avignon; the other, _Interpretationum et responsorum acutissimi atque clarissimi jurisconsulti dōmi Joan francisci de Sancto Nazario cognomento de Ripa libri tres_, is a very large quarto printed in 1527. Like most books of the kind, both volumes commence by complimentary verses, the carmen ‘Jacobi Meigroni Novensis, ad studiosos legum juvenes,’ being a good specimen of the punning panegyric of the period. In a similar composition mentioned under the heading ‘Sienna,’ Dathus is preferred to Cicero. According to Meigronus, De Ripa is more reliable than the Delphic oracle. Of the larger Avignon initials two only occur in the larger volume, the F reproduced in the text at the beginning of the privilege, and an S at the beginning of the third book, which is somewhat imperfectly printed. The smaller letters are much more numerous, especially in the _Libri Interpretationum et responsorum_. A very important work[33] has been devoted to the early printing of Poitiers, one volume of which consists chiefly of facsimiles. As a rule the initials are devoid of interest, but there is a large grotesque L from a _Costumier de Poitou_ printed by J. de Marnef, a P from a missal, and a few with human faces, such as the one that we reproduce. [33] _Monuments de l’Imprimerie à Poitiers_, par A. Claudin. Later in the century a legal work was published with a nearly complete alphabet representing the different occurrences that might happen to an accused person, such as the stocks and the rack. They are, however, as a rule, too poorly printed, and the copies we have seen are not worth reproducing. In books printed at other French towns we have discovered but few initials. There is a large but uninteresting one at the beginning of a Chambéry edition of the _Roy Modus_. On the only leaf that has come down to the present time of a Limoges missal, and which forms the subject of a memoir by M. Claudin, is an R, with the Resurrection. In an early Albi edition of Æsop, with cuts, in what is called the _manière éraillée_, which look as if executed by scratching the block with a rusty nail, there are some initials of which the N will give an idea of the _éraillée_ manner. In a later tract, _La vie et légende de Mme. Ste. Petroine_, there is an A, which may possibly have been used first for a missal.