Curiosities of Olden Times
soleil deserves commemoration, and merits now the attention that the age in which she lived refused to yield to her.
The date and place of her birth cannot be fixed with accuracy; but, as a memoir published in 1640 says that for thirty years she had been engaged in mineralogical studies, it seems probable that she was born about 1590. She belonged to the noble family of Bertereau, in the Touraine; her Christian name was Martine. In 1610 she married Jean du Châtelet, Baron de Beausoleil and d'Auffenbach, a Brabantine nobleman of great learning and abilities. The Baron had borne arms in his youth, but his natural tastes lay in the direction of natural philosophy, and his attention was chiefly directed to mineralogy, then a science in its earliest infancy. Following the bent of his inclinations, and impelled by the desire of obtaining a practical acquaintance with the working of mines, and the character and conditions of the different metal ores in situ, he visited in order the mines of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Tyrol, Silesia, Moravia, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Scotland, and England. By this means he obtained a practical knowledge of his subject possessed by no other in his day, and an intimate acquaintance with ores and their indications, which made him the first of mineralogists. The German Emperors, Rudolph and Matthias, recognised his abilities, and constituted him Commissary-General of the Hungarian mines. The Archduke
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