s.

At any rate, be my pen what it may, I shall use it at all hazards.

This Queen is descended, on her father's side, from the race of
the Medici, one of the noblest and most illustrious families,
not only in Italy but in Christendom.

Whatever may be said, she was a foreigner to these parts, since
the alliances of the royal houses cannot commonly be made with
those within their kingdoms. Nor is it often for the best, since
foreign marriages are often more advantageous than those made
nearer home.

The House of the Medici has ever been allied with the Crown of
France, and still bears the _fleur-de-lys_ that King Louis XI
granted that house as a token of alliance and perpetual
confederation.

On her mother's side she is descended from one of the noblest
houses of France; a house truly French in race, in heart and
in affection, that great house of Boulogne and of the County of
Auvergne.

Thus it is difficult to say or to decide which of these two houses
is the grander, or which is the more memorable by its deeds.

Here is what is said of them by the Archbishop of Bourges, he of
the house of Beaune, as great a scholar and as worthy a prelate
as there is in Christendom (although there are some who say that
he was a trifle unsteady in belief, and of little worth in the
scales of M. Saint-Michel, who weighs good Christians for the
day of judgment, or so 'tis said). It is found in the funeral
oration which the Archbishop made upon the said Queen at Blois.

In the days when that great captain of the Gauls, Brennus, led
his forces through Italy and Greece, there were in his troop
two French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono,
who seeing the wicked designs of Brennus to invade and desecrate
the temple of Delphos, after his great conquests, withdrew their
forces and passed into Asia with their ships and followers.

They pushed on until they entered the sea of Medes, which is near
Lydia and Persia.

Thence, after gaining many victories and obtaining many conquests,
they retired, and while returning through Italy on their way to
France, Felsinus stopped on the site of what is now Florence,
beside the river Arno, a place which he saw was beautiful and
commanding and situated much as another place which had pleased
him much in the country of the Medes.

There he built the city which to-day is Florence.

His companion, Bono, built a second, and neighboring city which
he called Bononia, the modern Bologn