THE ROYAL MENAGERIE OF FRANCE. 509 



These lions and other exotic animals, collected only to satisfy a vain 

 love of display, were huddled together in some outbuilding belong- 

 ing to the royal residence. Philip VI, in 1333, had obtained in 

 the northeast corner of the old Louvre ^ a barn in which to keep his 

 wild beasts. There was under Charles Y some "oyseaulx et bestes 

 estranges" at Conflaus, an aviary and a menagerie at Tournelles, and 

 the rue des Lions-Saint-Paul has preserved the remembrance of its 

 noisy guests, who at that time lodged in an annex to the hotel of that 

 name.^ 



With the fifteenth century more catholic tastes began to appear. 

 Animals of far-away countries were sought for parks, and the due de 

 Berry, whom our regretted Luce had named the Curious, possessed, 

 among other rare species at the chateau of Mehun-sur-Yevre, a drome- 

 dary, a chamois, and an ostrich. 



The last years of Louis XI were fraught with something better for 

 practical zoology. In his gloomy manor of Touraine, where he was 

 confined by the disorder that was soon to destroy him, the sad King 

 attempted to enliven his solitude, and surrounded himself with new or 

 little-known animals that he caused to be brought together from all 

 parts, Commines explains these purchases made by his redoubtable 

 master by the need which he felt of making people talk of him and of 

 spreading abroad the good opinion which was prevalent concerning his 

 health and his strength. But Louis XI knew, when bethought proper, 

 how to direct his efforts to more effective ends than those which his 

 councillor attributes to mere caprice, and the very choice of the animals 

 brought to the royal menagerie — elk and reindeer from Scandinavia, 

 horses and mules from Spain and Sicily, Spanish or Barbary dogs, 

 Tunisian ostriches and falcons, canary birds and turtle doves from 

 Africa — shows that it was something more than meaningless curiosity 

 that animated the inhabitant of the manor at Plessis-les-Tours. 



Louis XI had, as it seems to me, wider and more lofty views. I 

 imagine that that great mind thought, in its isolation, that it might be 

 possible to enrich the kingdom of France with some of those interesting 

 and useful animals of which numerous and choice sjiecimens were 

 brought him at great expense from the south and north by Guillaume 

 Moire, Gabriel Bertran, Robert Sanze, and his other purveyors. Death 

 surprised him in the midst of these efforts, and the only result of these 

 attempts at acclimation was the acquisition of that gentle musician, the 

 joy of the mansard, the popular singer from the Canaries, a quite unex- 

 pected legacy from the sad recluse of the manor of Plessis-les-Tours.^ 



Anne de Beaujeu had, it is said, all the tastes of her father; she was 

 fond of living animals, preferring those that were odd and strange; thus 



' Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquit^s de la ville de Paris, Vol. I, page 365. 

 A. Berty, TopograpMe liistoriqae du vieux Paris. Region du Louvre et des Tuiler- 

 ies, Vol. I, pages 124, 159. Mem. Soc. de Paris, Vol. VI, pages 103-107. 



- Sauval, op. cit.. Vol. II, page 282, etc. 



^Cf. Jal., Dictionuaire critique de biographie et d'histoire, article Serins. 



