Of the above fact we have a proof, in the misfortune that befel Mademoiselle de Limeuil, at the Court of France, where she was a Maid of Honour to the Queen, Wife to King Henry II. as we find in the _Mémoires de Brantôme_: for my respect for the Reader induces me to offer him only such anecdotes as are supported by good authorities. Mademoiselle de Limeuil, as Brantôme relates, was a very witty handsome young Lady, extremely ready at her pen, and related to the best families in the Kingdom. She was placed at Court in the capacity of Maid of Honour to the Queen; and she had been there but a few months, when she tried her wit at the expence of the Gentlemen and Ladies at Court, and wrote a copy of verses, or Pasquinade, in which few Characters were spared. As these verses were ingeniously written, they spread very fast; and people were very curious to know who had composed this piece of satire: at last, it was found out that Mademoiselle de Limeuil was the Author of it; and as the Queen, besides being a person of a serious temper, was grown disgusted with the great licence of writing that had of late prevailed at Court, and had determined at least to prevent any satire, or lampoon, from originating in her own Houshold, orders were given in consequence of which Mademoiselle de Limeuil was rewarded for her verses by a flagellation; and those young Ladies in the suite of the Queen, who had been privy to the composition of the Pasquinade, were likewise flagellated. The instances of flagellations just now related, from which, neither the beauty, nor the birth, nor the rank of the Culprits, nor the brilliancy of their wit, their readiness at their pen, nor happy turn for Satire, could screen them, clearly shew how much flagellations were in esteem in the times we speak of, and how much efficacy they were thought to possess, for insuring those two great advantages, good order and decorum. There is no doubt therefore, but that they were still more strictly used for the improvement of the morals of those swarms of unruly young Men, who then filled the Houses of Kings, or of the Great, and went by the name of Pages. Indeed we find that the Gentlemen, or Equerries, whose care it was to superintend their conduct, were invested with a very extensive power of inflicting flagellations; and so frequent were the occasions in which they found it necessary to use corrections of this kind, that the words _flagellation_, and _Page_, are become as it were essentially connected together, and it is almost impossible to mention the one, without raising an idea of the other: I shall therefore forbear to relate any instances of such corrections; and flagellations of Pages, like those of School-boys, are too vulgar flagellations to have a place in this Book.