Note 8 — Volume XI.

It was at Villers-Cotterets, a small town in the department of Aisne, where François I. had a château, that the famous ordinance was signed, providing that the acts of sovereign courts should no longer be written in Latin, but should be drawn up in the vernacular. This château is still in existence, although sadly shorn of its pristine magnificence, and diverted from the uses for which it was originally intended. Begun by François I., who carved the salamanders upon it, it was finished by Henri II., who added his cipher and that of Catherine de Medicis. The visitor may still see those two letters, masterpieces of the Renaissance, connected,—and note this well, for the spirit of the time is epitomized in this lapidary fact,—connected by a lover's knot, which includes also the crescent of Diane de Poitiers. A charming, but, we must agree, a strange trilogy, which consists of the cipher and arms of the husband, the wife, and the mistress.