In an article on Cards, in the 'Magasin Pittoresque' for April, 1836, an illustration is given, of which the annexed cut is a fac-simile. The writer of the article says that it is exactly copied from a miniature in a MS. of the _Cité de Dieu_, translated from St. Augustine by Raoul de Presles, who began the translation in 1371, and finished it in 1375. The writer, considering the MS. to be of the same date as the translation, says that the miniature represents persons of distinction of the reign of Charles V.[86] As he adduces, however, no evidence to show that the MS. is of so early a date, his so-called demonstration that cards were well known in 1375, is essentially defective; for, in transcripts of books, nothing is more common than to find, in the illustrations, things which were unknown when the works were first written. The costume, indeed, appears more like that of persons of distinction about the latter end of the reign of Charles VI, 1422, than of the reign of Charles V, 1364-1380. From the kind of cards which the parties are seen playing with, no safe conclusion can be drawn with respect to the age of the manuscript; for it is not positively known what kind of cards were chiefly used in France between 1392 and 1440. But, whatever may be the date of the manuscript, it is evident that numeral cards marked with "pips" and honours, similarly to those now in common use, were known in France at the time when the drawing was made. The following account of the introduction of cards into Viterbo, in 1379, previously referred to in Chapter I, is here given as it is to be found in Leber's 'Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer.' "Feliciano Bussi relates, in his 'History of Viterbo,'[87] a work but little known, that in 1379, the epoch of the schism caused by the opposition of the anti-pope Clement to Urban VI, the mercenary troops of each party committed all manner of annoyances and spoliations in the Roman States, and that a great number of cattle, which had been stolen by the marauders, and driven to Viterbo for the provisionment of that city, were there seized, and carried off in a moment. 'And yet,' adds the historian, 'who could believe it! In this same year of so much distress there was introduced into Viterbo the game of cards, or, as I would say, playing cards, which previously were not in the least known in that city;' the words of Covelluzzo, are, folio 28, verso: 'In the year 1379, was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called _Naib_.'" As the introduction of cards into Viterbo is here directly recorded as a historical fact, there can be little doubt, if the passage in Covelluzzo be genuine, that cards were known to the Italian condottieri in 1379. In the chronicle of Giovan Morelli, of the date 1393, _Naibi_ is mentioned as a kind of game; and, from the context, it has been concluded that it was one at which children only played.[88]