INTRODUCTION. 
13 
claw, presented it, with a complimentary ad¬ 
dress, to the royal bridegroom. 
In the same country, an homage, unparalleled 
in its kind, was paid to a lady in the early part 
of the seventeenth century. The Duke of Mon- 
tausier, on obtaining the promise of the hand 
of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, sent to her, 
according to custom, every morning till that 
fixed for the nuptials, a bouquet composed of 
the finest flowers of the season. But this was 
not all: on the morning of New Year’s Day, 
1634, the day appointed for the marriage, he 
laid upon her dressing-table a magnificently 
bound folio volume, on the parchment leaves of 
which the most skilful artists of the day had 
painted from nature a series of the most beau¬ 
tiful flowers then cultivated in Europe. The 
first poets of Paris contributed the poetical illus¬ 
trations, which were written by the cleverest 
penmen under the different flowers. The most 
celebrated of these madrigals, composed by 
Chapelain on the Crown Imperial, represented 
that superb flower as having sprung from the 
blood of Gustavus Adolphus, who fell in the 
battle of Liitzen ; and thus paid, in the name of 
c 
