Brantome, it may be mentioned, also speaks of the King contracting a complaint through his gallantries, and declares that it shortened his life, but he mentions no woman by name, and does not tell the story of the advocate’s wife.  It will have been observed in the extract we have quoted that Guyon de la Nauthe says that the advocate had left children “in possession of high estate and good repute.”  Disome, however, had no children either by his first or his second wife.  The question therefore arises whether La Nauthe is not referring to another advocate, for instance Le Feron, husband of La belle Feronniere.  These would appear to have left posterity (see Catalogue de tous les Conseillers du Parlement de Paris, pp. 120-2-3, and Blanchard’s les Presidents a mortier du Parlement de Paris, etc., 1647, 8vo).  But it should be borne in mind that the Feronniere intrigue is purely traditional.  The modern writers who speak of it content themselves with referring to Mezeray, a very doubtful authority at most times, and who did not write, it should be remembered, till the middle of the seventeenth century, his Abrege Chronologique being first published in 1667.  Moreover, when we come to consult him we find that he merely makes a passing allusion to La Feronniere, and even this is of the most dubious kind.  Here are his words:  “In 1538 the King had a long illness at Compiegne, caused by an ulcer....  He was cured at the time, but died [of it?] nine years later. I have sometimes heard say(!) that he caught this disease from La belle 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.  Now this was long before the belle Feronniere was ever heard of, and further it was prior to the intrigue with Jane Disome, who, by Queen Margaret’s showing, did not meet with “the young prince” until she had been married some time and was in despair of having children by her husband.  The latter had lost his first wife late in 1511, and it is unlikely that he married Jane Lecoq until after some months of widowhood.  To our thinking Prince Francis would have appeared upon the scene in or about 1514, his intrigue culminating in the scandal of the following year, in which Mons. Cruche played so conspicuous a part.  With reference to the complaint from which King Francis is alleged to have suffered, one must not overlook the statement of a contemporary, Cardinal d’Armagnac, who, writing less than a year before the King’s death, declares that Francis enjoys as good health as any man in his kingdom (Genin’s Lettres de Marguerite, 1841, p. 473).  Cardinal d’Armagnac’s intimacy with the King enabled him to speak authoritatively, and his statement refutes the assertions of Brantome, Guyon de la Nauthe and Mezeray, besides tending to the conclusion that the youthful complaint mentioned by Louise of Savoy was merely a passing disorder.—­Ed.