Note 82 — Chapter II · INTRODUCTION OF CARDS INTO EUROPE.

"Tout le monde sait que ce charmant ouvrage a été composé en 1459 par Antoine de Lassalle."—Duchesne, Précis Historique sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 5, prefixed to the 'Jeux de Cartes Tarots,' &c. Mons. Duchesne himself does not appear to have known "what all the world knows" when he wrote his 'Observations sur les Cartes à jouer,' printed in the Annuaire Historique, 1837; for he there seems to admit that the work was composed by a person who lived at the period to which it relates, and refers to two manuscripts in which the word "cartes" is not to be found. He says that a third manuscript, which contains it, appears to have been transcribed about the end of the fifteenth century, but does not inform the reader that the work itself is a mere romance, written in 1459.