B. (Tale XXV., Page 131.)
Baron Jerome Pichon's elucidations of this story, as given by him in the_Melanges de la Societe des Bibliophiles Francais_, 1866, may be thussummarised:--
The advocate referred to in the tale is James Disome, who Mezeraydeclares was the _first_ to introduce Letters to the bar, though this,to my mind, is a very hazardous assertion. Disome was twice married. Hisfirst wife, Mary de Rueil, died Sept. 17, 1511, and was buried at theCordeliers church; he afterwards espoused Jane Lecoq, daughter ofJohn Lecoq, Counsellor of the Paris Parliament, who held the fiefsof Goupillieres, Corbeville and Les Porcherons, where he possessed ahandsome chateau, a view of which has been engraved by Israel Silvestre.John Lecoq's wife was Magdalen Bochart, who belonged like her husband toan illustrious family of lawyers and judges. Their daughter Jane, who isthe heroine of the tale, must have been married to James Disome not verylong after the death of the latter's first wife, for her intrigue withFrancis I. originated prior to his accession to the throne (1515). Thisis proved by the tale, in which Disome is spoken of as being the youngprince's advocate. Now none but the Procurors and Advocates-General werecounsel to the Crown, and Disome held neither of those offices. He wasundoubtedly advocate to Francis as Duke de Valois, and, from certainallusions in the tale, it may be conjectured that he had been advocateto Francis's father, the Count of Angouleme.
When Francis ascended the throne his intrigue with Jane Disome wasalready notorious, as is proved by this extract, under date 1515, fromthe _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_: "About this time whilst the Kingwas in Paris, there was a priest called Mons. Cruche, a great buffoon,who a little time before with several others had publicly performedin certain entertainments and novelties' (_sic_) on scaffolds upon thePlace Maubert, there being in turn jest, sermon, morality and farce; andin the morality appeared several lords taking their cloth of gold to thetomb and carrying their lands upon their shoulders into the other world.And in the farce came Monsieur Cruche with his companions, who had alantern by which all sorts of things were seen, and among others a henfeeding under a salamander, (1) and this hen carried something on herback which would suffice to kill ten men (_dix hommes, i.e._, Disome).
1 The salamander was Francis I.'s device.
The interpretation of this was that the King loved and enjoyed awoman of Paris, who was the daughter of a counsellor of the Court ofParliament, named Monsieur le Coq. And she was married to an advocate atthe bar of Parliament, a very skilful man, named Monsieur James Disome,who was possessed of much property which the King confiscated. Soonafterwards the King sent eight or ten of his principal gentlemen to supat the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la Juiverie, and thither, underthe false pretence of making him play the said farce, was summonedMessire Cruche, who came in the evening, by torch-light, and wasconstrained to play the farce by the said gentlemen. But thereupon, atthe very beginning, he was stripped to his shirt, and wonderfully wellwhipped with straps until he was in a state of the utmost wretchedness.At the end there was a sack all ready to put him in, that he might bethrown from the window, and then carried to the river; and this wouldassuredly have come to pass had not the poor man cried out very loudlyand shown them the tonsure on his head. And all these things were done,so it was owned, on the King's behalf."
It is probable that this intrigue between the King and Jane Disomeceased soon after the former's accession; at all events Francis did notevince much indulgence for the man whose wife he had seduced. Under dateApril, 1518, the Journal dun Bourgeois de Paris mentions the arrest ofseveral advocates and others for daring to discuss the question of thePragmatic Sanction. Disome was implicated in the matter but appears tohave escaped for a time; however in September of that year we find himdetained at Orleans and subjected to the interrogatories of variousroyal Commissioners. The affair was then adjourned till the followingyear, when no further mention is made of it.
Disome died prior to 1521, for in September of that year we find hiswife remarried to Peter Perdrier, Lord of Baubigny, notary and secretaryto the King, and subsequently clerk of the council to the city of Paris.Perdrier was a man of considerable means; for when the King raised aforced loan of silver plate in September 1521, we find him taxed to theamount of forty marcs of silver (26 1/2 lbs. troy); or only ten _marcs_less than each counsellor of Parliament was required to contribute. Fiveand twenty years later, he lost his wife Jane, the curious recordof whose death runs as follows: "The year one thousand five hundredforty-six, after Easter, at her house (hotel) Rue de la Parcheminerie,called Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, died the late Demoiselle Jane Lecoq,daughter of Master John Lecoq, Counsellor of the Court of Parliament,deceased; in her lifetime wife of noble Master Peter Perdrier, Lord ofBaubigny, &c, and previously wife of the late Master James Disome, inhis lifetime advocate at the Court of Parliament and Lord of Cernay inBeauvaisis; and the said Demoiselle Jane Lecoq (2) is here--buried withher father and mother, and departed this life on the 23rd day of April1546. Pray ye God for her soul."
2 The church of the Celestines.
Less than a twelvemonth afterwards King Francis followed his whilommistress to the tomb. She left by Peter Perdrier a son named John, Lordof Baubigny, who in 1558 married Anne de St. Simon, grand-aunt of theauthor of the Memoirs. John Perdrier was possibly the Baubigny whokilled Marshal de St. Andre at the battle of Dreux in 1562.
Such is Baron Pichon's account of Jane Lecoq and her husbands. We havenow to turn to an often-quoted passage of the _Diverses Lecons_ of LouisGuyon, sieur de la Nauthe, a physician of some repute in his time, butwhose book it should be observed was not issued till 1610, or more thanhalf-a-century subsequent to King Francis I.'s death. La Nauthe writesas follows:--
"Francis I. became enamoured of a woman of great beauty and grace, thewife of an advocate of Paris, whom I will not name, for he has leftchildren in possession of high estate and good repute; and this ladywould not yield to the King, but on the contrary repulsed him with manyharsh words, whereat the King was sorely vexed. And certain courtiersand royal princes who knew of the matter told the King that he mighttake her authoritatively and by virtue of his royalty, and one of themeven went and told this to the lady, who repeated it to her husband.The advocate clearly perceived that he and his wife must needs quitthe kingdom, and that he would indeed find it hard to escape withoutobeying. Finally the husband gave his wife leave to comply with theKing's desire, and in order that he might be no hindrance in the matter,he pretended to have business in the country for eight or ten days;during which time, however, he remained concealed in Paris, frequentingthe brothels and trying to contract a venereal disease in order togive it to his wife, so that the King might catch it from her; and hespeedily found what he sought, and infected his wife and she the King,who gave it to several other women, whom he kept, and could never getthoroughly cured, for all the rest of his life he remained unhealthy,sad, peevish and inaccessible."
Brantome, it may be mentioned, also speaks of the King contracting acomplaint through his gallantries, and declares that it shortened hislife, but he mentions no woman by name, and does not tell the story ofthe advocate's wife. It will have been observed in the extract we havequoted that Guyon de la Nauthe says that the advocate had left children"in possession of high estate and good repute." Disome, however, had nochildren either by his first or his second wife. The question thereforearises whether La Nauthe is not referring to another advocate, forinstance Le Feron, husband of La belle Feronniere. These would appear tohave left posterity (see _Catalogue de tous les Conseillers du Parlementde Paris_, pp. 120-2-3, and Blanchard's _les Presidents a mortier duParlement de Paris, etc_., 1647, 8vo). But it should be borne in mindthat the Feronniere intrigue is purely traditional. The modern writerswho speak of it content themselves with referring to Mezeray, a verydoubtful authority at most times, and who did not write, it should beremembered, till the middle of the seventeenth century, his _AbregeChronologique_ being first published in 1667. Moreover, when we cometo consult him we find that he
merely makes a passing allusion to LaFeronniere, and even this is of the most dubious kind. Here are hiswords: "In 1538 the King had a long illness at Compiegne, caused by anulcer.... He was cured at the time, but died [of it?] nine years later._I have sometimes heard say_(!) that he caught this disease from Labelle Feronniere."
Against this we have to set the express statement of Louise of Savoy,who writes in her journal, under date 1512, that her son (born in 1494)had already and at an early age had a complaint _en secrete nature_. Nowthis was long before the belle Feronniere was ever heard of, and furtherit was prior to the intrigue with Jane Disome, who, by Queen Margaret'sshowing, did not meet with "the young prince" until she had been marriedsome time and was in despair of having children by her husband. Thelatter had lost his first wife late in 1511, and it is unlikely that hemarried Jane Lecoq until after some months of widowhood. To our thinkingPrince Francis would have appeared upon the scene in or about 1514,his intrigue culminating in the scandal of the following year, inwhich Mons. Cruche played so conspicuous a part. With reference to thecomplaint from which King Francis is alleged to have suffered, one mustnot overlook the statement of a contemporary, Cardinal d'Armagnac, who,writing less than a year before the King's death, declares that Francisenjoys as good health as any man in his kingdom (Genin's _Lettres deMarguerite_, 1841, p. 473). Cardinal d'Armagnac's intimacy with theKing enabled him to speak authoritatively, and his statement refutes theassertions of Brantome, Guyon de la Nauthe and Mezeray, besides tendingto the conclusion that the youthful complaint mentioned by Louise ofSavoy was merely a passing disorder.--Ed.