42 ([return])
[ Hervé Meriadech, a Breton squire and gallant soldier, who performed several gallant feats of arms. Louis XI named him Governor of Tournay in 1461.]
46 ([return])
[ Much resembles No. XII. The author is believed to be Chrestien de Dygoigne, whose name appears at the head of story No. 68.]
47 ([return])
[ This is believed to be a true story. The person who got rid of his wife in this cunning way was Caffrey Carles, President of the Parliament of Grenoble. He was skilled in Latin and “the humanities”—in the plural only it would appear—and was chosen by Anne of Brittany, the wife of Louis XII, to teach her daughter, Renée, afterwards Duchess of Perrara.
The story is so dramatic that it has been often imitated.]
50 ([return])
[ By Antoine de la Sale, a short appreciation of whose literary merits appears in the Introduction. He has appended his own name to this story; in other cases he appears as “L’Acteur” that is to say the “Editor.” (See No. 51). The story is taken from Sacchetti or Poggio. The idea has suggested itself to many writers, including Lawrence Sterne, in Tristram Shandy.]