AGNES SOREL

was the favourite mistress of Charles the Seventh No Prince's amours were ever attended with greater bleffings to his kingdom than the gallantries of this Prince with Agnes. She roufed him from the state of indolence and of luxury in which he had been long immerfed, and prevailed upon him to put himself at the head of his army, and to make an attack upon the English, who were nearly masters of his kingdom. She told him, that an Aftrologer had predicted to her, that she should be beloved by the greatest Sovereign in the world, but that the prediction could never regard him, for that he had taken no pains to regain from the enemy his kingdom which they had ufurped: "I cannot then," added fhe, " ever see the pre"diction accomplished, unless I go over to "England." These remonftrances had their proper effect upon the Prince, who, in attending to them, gratified at once his love and his ambition.

Agnes, by her will, founded a Collegiate Church, and ordered her tomb to be placed in the middle of the choir. Soon after her death Louis the Eleventh vifited the church; and as the Monks knew he bore no good will to the memory of his Father's

C 4

Father's mistress, they defired him to permit them to remove an object fo fcandalous to piety as the tomb of a King's mistress must be. He replied, "With all my heart: but you must first return "to her family what the left away from them to "you."

Francis the Firft wrote under the portrait of
Agues Sorel, with his pencil, thefe lines:

Plus de louange et d'honneur tu mérite,
La caufe étant de France recouvrer;
Que ce que peut dedans un Cloitre ouvrer
Clofe Nonnain, ou bien dévot Hermite.

Agnes, thy charms a patriot zeal display'd,
And rous'd thy Sovereign to the embattled field!
Each fainted Hermit and each cloifter'd Maid
To thee the palm of praise and honour yield!

AIMERIGOT TETE-NOIRE.

THIS celebrated warrior and plunderer of his country lived in the reign of Charles the Seventh of France. His will is very fingular, and marks very diftinctly his character.

"I leave," fays he, "to the Chapel of St. "George, for reparations, one thousand five

"hundred

«hundred livres.

Item, à ma bonne amie, qui "m'a loyaulment fervie, two thousand five hundred "livres; and the overplus," adds he, addreffing himself to his Officers, "I leave to you that have "been my companions, and ought to be brethren "one to another: divide it amongst yourselves <handfomely; and if ye cannot agree, and the "Devil fhould come in amongst you, you fee "there an axe, good, ftrong, and cutting very "well; break open my ftrong box with it, and "let him take the contents of it who is able to "do fo."

JEANNE D'ARC.

THIS intrepid and fpirited female, who had faved her country, was taken afterwards by the English, and condemned to the flames as a forcerefs by fix French and one English Bishop. Couchon, Bishop of Beauvais, drew up the procès-verbal against her, and did not infert in it the appeal fhe made to the Pope. Jeanne, with great fimplicity, told him, "You infert only what makes against

me, and you never take the leaft notice of what "makes for me."

Jeanne

Jeanne was burnt on the market-place at Rouen, as a forcerefs, an idolatrefs, a blafphemer of God and of the Saints, as defiring the effufion of human blood, as divefting herself of the natural modesty of her fex, and as feducing Princes and people.

Pope Calixtus the Third fome years afterwards rehabilitated her 'memory, declaring her, by a Bull, a martyr to her religion, to her country, and to her Sovereign; and Chapelain made her the fubject of an Epic poem in French which is called La Pucelle."

LOUIS THE ELEVENTH,

KING OF FRANCE.

"A faithlefs Prince a leaden image wear !"

fays Mr. Pope, in fpeaking of this King, who always wore a leaden image of the Virgin in his

hat.

Louis, though cruel, perfidious, and rapacious, having no regard for the more necessary internal appendages of devotion, gave very much into the external marks of it. "His body," fays one of his contemporaries, "was entirely covered with "" reliques and fcapularies to which fome supposed "religious virtue was attached, and on his hat he "always

always wore a leaden image of the Virgin, to "which he paid fuch particular respect and vene"ration, that whenever he was about to do any"thing wicked or unjuft, he always put it afide, "Having, however, committed what acts of in"justice or of cruelty he thought fit for his pur"pose, he affumed it again, and prayed in great "confidence to her whofe image it reprefented *.

Indeed, the laft words that he was heard to "articulate, as he was dying, were "Notre Dame « d'Embrun, ma bonne Maîtresse, aidez-moi."

In reverence to his beloved Mistress, he made her Countess of Boulogne fur Mer; and affigned lands near that city for the maintenance of her

It is faid, that Louis, being dangerously ill, and hearing the Prieft pray to St. Eutropius, to grant him health of mind and of body, ordered him to fupprefs whạt refpected the health of his mind, and not to ask for too many things at once.

Louis fent the following letter to M. Cadonel, Frior of Notre Dame de Selles :

"Sir Prior, my friend, I moft earnestly intreat you to pray to God and Our Lady of Selles for me, that they will be fo good as to give me a quartan ague. For my "Phyficians tell me, that I have a diforder of which [ cannot recover, unless I am fo fortunate as to have the quartan ague. When I get it, I will immediately let you know.