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Updated: June 1, 2025
Afterwards, the countess slept with her aunt till the last day of the moon, when I asked the oracle if the Countess Lascaris had conceived. That well might be, for I had spared nothing to that intent; but I thought it more prudent to make the oracle reply that the operation had failed because the small Count d'Aranda had watched us behind a screen.
Every great nation except ours, which was immersed in barbarism, and engaged in civil broils, seems to have courted the residence of Lascaris, but the university of Paris fixed his regard: and though Leo X. treated with favour, and even friendship, the man whom he had encouraged to intimacy when Cardinal John of Medicis; though he made him superintendant of a Greek college at Rome; it is said he always wished to die in France, whither he returned in the reign of Francis the First; and wrote his Latin epigrams, which I have heard Doctor Johnson prefer even to the Greek ones preserved in Anthologia; and of which our Queen Elizabeth, inspired by Roger Ascham, desired to see the author; but he was then upon a visit to Rome, where he died of the gout at ninety-three years old.
Some years ago a Turinese lawyer, looking over his father's private papers, discovered that he was the legitimate heir to the Lascaris titles and estates, which had been left unreclaimed for many centuries. This gentleman, on proving his claim, assumed the grandiose title of Prince Lascaris del Comneno, grand duke of Macedonia. His glory was short-lived.
Nevertheless I did not feel at ease, and to prevent any plots taking place I hastened our departure. We started in May, in a travelling carriage containing Madame d'Urfe, myself, the false Lascaris, and her maid and favourite, named Brougnole. We were followed by a coach with two seats; in it were the Signora Laura and another servant.
The operation was fixed for the fourteenth day of the April moon. On that day we had a temperate supper, after which I went to bed. A quarter of an hour afterwards Madame d'Urfe came, leading the virgin Lascaris.
I send you here inclosed a letter from Comte Lascaris, who is a warm friend of yours: I desire that you will answer it very soon and cordially, and remember to make your compliments in it to Comte du Perron. A young man should never be wanting in those attentions; they cost little and bring in a great deal, by getting you people's good word and affection.
She also gave me the three dresses which she had promised to the Countess of Lascaris, but which that lady had never seen. One of these dresses was furred, and was exquisitely beautiful. I left Lyons equipped like a prince, and journeyed towards Turin, where I was to meet the famous Gualdo, who was none other than Ascanio Pogomas, whom I had summoned from Berne.
But having secretly arranged a meeting with the Emir Mahannah in the desert, she rode straight to his camp, accompanied by Monsieur and Madame Lascaris, who were living in the neighbourhood, and by a Bedouin guide. In a letter to General Oakes, dated January 25, 1813, she gives the following account of her first experiment upon the good faith of the Arabs:
Thrice did she clasp her to her breast with a tenderness that was quite maternal, calling her her beloved niece, and explaining the entire pedigrees of the families of Lascaris and d'Urfe to make the countess understand how she came to be her niece.
When the newly elected Pope Pius II., who as Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini had often been in Milan, came to visit the duke in 1457, he found Galeazzo reading Cicero, and his little brothers with their cherub faces sitting round their tutor, intent on his discourse; while on one occasion their sister Ippolita, the pupil of the great Constantine Lascaris, pronounced a Latin oration in honour of His Holiness.
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