Souvent femme varie,
Bien fol qui s'y fie!
(Woman is changing ever; fool the man who trusts her!)
P. 3: The word which Molière popularized does not date from that time; it was used much earlier, and in the thirteenth century we see a man pay a fine of twenty ounces of gold for calling an unfortunate husband coucou (cuckold). (Usatica regni Majorici, Anno 1248.) About the middle of the fifteenth century, in a letter of remission to a guilty fellow, we find this curious remark: "Cogul, which is the same (in the vernacular) as coulz or couppault, is one of the vilest insults to be thrust at a married man." At times the word coux was used:
Suis-je mis en la confrairie
Saint Arnoul le seignenur des Coux.
But it was just about the fifteenth century that the confusion appeared between this word and the bird of April (cuckoo); the word coucou (cuckoo), which had been explained by a fable, merely imitated the cry, whereas the word cocu (cuckold) had been derived from the early Low Latin cugus. "Couquou, thus named after its manner of singing and because it is famed for laying its eggs in the nests of other birds; so, inconsistently, he is called a cocu (cuckold) in whose nest another man comes." (Bouchet, Serées.) There is also a play by Passerat on the metamorphosis of a cuckoo which is worth mentioning. (Bib. Nat., manuscrit français, 22565, fo 24 vo.)
P. 4: In the present work the Author constantly uses the words belle et honneste (fair and honourable) to describe such and such a lady, of whom at the same time he speaks as being an unmitigated whore. But when he adds, as he does sometimes, vertueuse (virtuous) to belle et honneste, he implies by this that the lady was chaste and modest, and raised no talk about herself.
P. 7: The prothonotary Baraud was one of those churchmen of whom Brantôme says elsewhere: "It was customary at the time that prothonotaries, even those of good families, should scarcely be learned, but give themselves up to pleasure," etc.
P. 10: Cosimo de Medici, who had his wife Eleonora de Toledo poisoned. The daughter of whom Brantôme speaks was Isabella,
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