Note 550 — Chapter VIII

"Et seroit à desirer que ceste femme et le cardinal n'eussent jamais esté; car ces deux seuls out esté les flamesches de nos malheurs." De l'Aubespine, iii. 286. The reader will, after this, make little account of the extravagant panegyric by the Father Alby (inserted by Migne in his Dict. des Card., s. v. Lorraine); yet he may be amused at the precise contradiction between the estimate of the cardinal's political services made by this ecclesiastic and that of the practical statesman given above. He seems to the priest born for the good of others: "ayant pour cela merité de la postérité toutes les louanges d'un homme né pour le bien des autres, et le titre même de cardinal de France, qui lui fut donné par quelques écrivains de son temps." This blundering eulogist makes him to have been assigned by Francis I. as counsellor of his son.