Her biography, like those of many nonpolitical figures so far removed in time, is not rich in documented detail. It is known that she was born about 1520, the daughter of a wealthy cordage merchant. Despite her middle-class status, as a girl she studied music, Greek, Latin and Spanish, and seems also to have known Italian well, especially the work of Ariosto. In 1542—that is, in her twenties, late for those days—she married Ennemond Perrin, another cordage merchant and a friend of her father’s. Her husband was twenty years her senior and the marriage was childless; however, it endured for more than a quarter of a century, and on his death Perrin left her all his property. Both father and husband being men of wealth, Labé had a large house with pleasant gardens which became a rendezvous for poets and artists. Her liaison with de Magny apparently stirred no scandal, but ‘so brilliant a position naturally excited envy,’ and she was rather spitefully nicknamed “La Belle Cordelière.” After her husband’s death in 1565, the noblewoman of Lyons set upon “la petite bourgeoise” for having eclipsed them intellectually and socially, and during the brief year before her own death Labé was accused of being “livrée à toutes sortes de désordres.”[2] Until the time of her marriage Labé was certainly skilled and active in all the arts of an _homme de guerre_. Even later (about 1547) when Diane de Poitiers accompanied Henry II on a visit to Lyons, Louise seems to have been one of the moving spirits, if not the organizer, of a fête honoring the favorite, in which young women of the town assumed the costume of Diana the Huntress and exhibited their skill with bow and dart. (It is interesting to find Brantôme alluding to this event in passing, though he mentions no names and no precise date.)[3] In her thirties Labé rebelled against the limitations of feminine education, proclaiming that women should study all the “sciences” pursued by men, and in the letter of dedication to her friend which prefaced her volume in 1555 she begs them to ‘lift their spirits a little above their bobbins and distaffs.’[4] Shortly after the publication of this work she was estranged from Clémence de Bourges by the aforementioned “éclatante” quarrel of uncertain origin, though until then ‘their union was cited as one rare between two women.’[5] Apparently no one has suggested that she may have been homosexual. But in her “Elégie I,” we find the following: Encor Phébus, ami des Lauriers vers ... Chanter me fait ... Il m’a donné la lyre, qui les vers Souloit chanter de l’amour Lesbienne ...[6]