510 THE ROYAL MENAGERIE OF FRANCE. 



it was, xU 1489, that she tried to obtain from Lorenzo de Medicis a 

 giraffe which Malfota, envoy of the Sultau of Egypt, Kaitbai, had two 

 years before brought to Florence. "C'est la beste du monde que j'ay 

 plus grand desir de veoir," she jDleasantly wrote to the prince, who had 

 promised her by letter this curious animal. Lorenzo did not keep his 

 word, and Anne had to content herself with seeing the giraffe — in a 

 picture. 



The princely courts of Italy vied with each other in maintaining rare 

 and curious animals ; it was one of the characteristic traits of the luxury 

 of that epoch. "A great prince," writes Matarazzo, "ought to have 

 horses, dogs, mules, hawks, and other birds, buftbons, singers, and ani- 

 mals from distant lands." And the great princes of France did as those 

 of Italy, whom they wished to imitate in everything — they kept buffoons, 

 singers, and animals. The menagerie was again established near the 

 Louvre, and there were sent out to great distances, to Tunis, Fez, etc., 

 special missions to bring back horses, greyhounds, camels, ostriches, a 

 lion, an ounce, and a large number of birds intended for the chase and 

 for ornament. A consul in Egypt sent young leopards, and there were 

 also obtained bulls, bears, etc. 



i^atural history had just been revived in the west. Those who pur- 

 sued it in France doubtless profited by the varied instruction which 

 could be afforded by the royal collection, which grew richer every day. 

 And yet one fine morning, the 21st of January, 1583, the entire 

 menagerie disappeared in a lamentable catastrophe. 



The sick mind of the last of the Valois, filled with strange visions, 

 saw in a dream lions, bears, and dogs tearing his palpitating members. 

 Henry III then went and partook of the sacrament with the Bonshommes 

 of Nigeon, near Chaillot, and, returning to the Louvre, had all the lions, 

 bulls, bears,^ etc., killed with shots of arquebus. Thus ended, without 

 any profit to science or art, that royal menagerie that might have 

 served as a center for zoological studies in our country. It was more 

 than a century before there arose anyone to continue the work of Pierre 

 Gilles and Belon de Mans. 



Henry IV cared little for wild animals. He only kept an elephant 

 that had been given him, and all his collection of 1591 could be put 

 upon the back of a horse. ^ Later, the Grand Seigneur having sent him 

 a tiger that strangled one of his dogs, he disposed of the ferocious beast, 

 which was exhibited for two sols, in the rue de la*Harpe in May, 1607. 

 Louis XIII, on the contrary, had, at his hunting lodge at Versailles, 

 some animals, and especially birds, a collection that suggested later to 

 his son the construction of the celebrated Menagerie du Pare, illustrated 

 by the works of Perrault, Duverney, Oudry, and Desportes. It was 

 in 1663 that Louis XIV commenced the first work upon this magnificent 



1 M^moires-Journanx de Pierre del'Estoile, Vol. II, Journal de Henri III, Paris, 

 1875, page 99. 

 2 Ibid., Vol. VIII, 1880, page 297. 



