Spanish fiction -- Translations into English; Spanish poetry -- Translations into English
The familiar formula--"must have been"--is out of place here. The
necessity does not exist. It seems unlikely that Márquez Torres can
have met the members of Mayenne's suite on February 25, 1615; for
Mayenne's mission ended two and a half years previously. Mayenne and
his attachés left Madrid on August 31, 1612: see Luis Cabrera de
Córdoba, _Relaciones de las cosas sucedidas en la Córte de España,
desde 1599 hasta 1614_ (Madrid, 1857), p. 493, and François-Tommy
Perrens, _Les Mariages espagnols sous le règne de Henri IV. et la
régence de Marie de Médicis, 1602-1615_ (Paris, 1869), pp. 403 and
416-417. "Umena" is, as everybody knows, the old Spanish form of
Mayenne's title; but no Spaniard ever dreamed of applying this title to
the ambassador of whom Márquez Torres speaks. As appears from a letter
(dated February 18, 1615) to "old Æsop Gondomar," the special envoy to
whom Márquez Torres refers was known as "Mr. de Silier": see Navarrete,
_op. cit._, pp. 493-494. Mr. de Silier was the brother of Nicolas
Brûlart, Marquis de Sillery, Grand Chancellor of France from September,
1607, to May, 1616. The special envoy figures in French history as the
Commandeur Noel Brûlart de Sillery: he and his suite reached Madrid
on February 15, 1615 (Navarrete, _op. cit._, p. 493), and they left
that city on March 19, 1615 (Perrens, _op. cit._, p. 519). One might
have hoped that, as M. de Sillery founded the mission of Sillery near
Quebec, his name would be known to all educated Englishmen. His death
on September 26, 1640, is mentioned by his confessor, St. Vincent de
Paul, in a letter to M. Codoing, dated November 15, 1640. See _Lettres
de S. Vincent de Paul_ (Paris, 1882), vol. i., p. 100.
I do not know who the above-mentioned "Regent Anne of Austria" is
supposed to be. The French Regent who sent Mayenne and Sillery to Spain
was Marie de Médicis, mother of Louis XIII. Her regency ended in 1615.
In 1615 Anne of Austria, sister of Philip IV., became the wife of Louis
XIII. Her regency began in 1643. It would almost seem as though the
earlier French Queen-Regent had been mistaken for her future Spanish
daughter-in-law, or, as though the writer were unaware of the fact that
the "Regent Anne of Austria" and the "Infanta Ana" were really one and
the same person. But the whole passage indicates great confusion of
thought, as well as strange misunderstanding of Navarrete's words and
of the document printed by him.
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