◆Louis XI. is generally supposed not only to have bandied many such stories with all the young bloods at the Court of Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, where he had taken refuge when Dauphin, but actually to have taken pains to have a collection of them made and afterwards published in the same order in which we have them, in the Work entitled “_Cent Nouvelles nouvelles_,” _lequel en soy contient cent chapitres ou histoires, composées ou récitées par nouvelles gens depuis naguères_,—“An Hundred New Romances,—a Work containing in itself an hundred chapters or tales, composed or recited by divers folk in these last years.” This is confirmed by the words of the original preface or notice, which would appear to have been written in his life-time: “And observe that throughout the _Nouvelles_, wherever ’tis said by _Monseigneur_, Monseigneur the Dauphin is meant, which hath since succeeded to the crown and is now King Louis XI.; for in those days he was in the Duke of Burgundy’s country.” But as it is absolutely certain this Prince only withdrew into Brabant at the end of the year 1456, and only returned to France in August 1461, it is quite impossible the Collection can have appeared in France about the year 1455, as is stated without sufficient consideration in the preface of the latest editions of this work. Two ancient editions are known, one,—Paris 1486, folio; the other also published at Paris, by the widow of Johan Treperre, N. D., also folio. Besides this, two modern editions, with badly executed cuts, printed at Cologne, by Pierre Gaillard, 1701 and 1736 respectively, 2 vols. 8vo. [58] P. 93: ◆ By _Bourguignonne_ the King meant _étrangère_ (foreigner). [59] P. 94: ◆See the sojourn of Charles VIII. at Lyons: _Séjours de Charles VIII. et Louis XII. à Lyon sur le Rosne jouxte la copie des faicts, gestes et victoires des roys Charles VIII. et Louis XII._, Lyon, 1841. ◆Louis XII. had really been a “good fellow,” without mentioning the laundress of the court, who was rumored to be the mother of Cardinal de Bucy, he had known at Genoa Thomasina Spinola, with whom, according to Jean d’Authon, his relations were purely moral. [60] P. 97: ◆Francis I. forbade by the decree of December 23, 1523, that any farces be played at the colleges of the University of Paris “Wherein scandalous remarks are made about the King or the princes or about the people of the King’s entourage.” (Clairambault, 824, fol. 8747, at the Biblilothèque Nationale.) This king maintained, as Brantôme says, that women are very fickle and inconstant; he wrote to Montmorency of his own sister Marguerite de Valois, November 8, 1537: “We may be sure that when we wish women to stop they are dying to trot along; but when we wish them to go they refuse to budge from their place.” (Clairambault, 336, fol. 6230, v^o.) [61] P. 98: ◆Paul Farnese, Paul III.—1468–1549.