Claude de Malleville

He was with this lord for a long time, as secretary, but with only very little employment there, and as he had a lot of ambition, he was bored by it, and begged him to agree that he should leave him to enter the service of Cardinal de Bérulle, who was then in favour.

But having done no better business there, he returned to his first master, to whom he rendered many services in his prison, and who having been released from it, and having been reinstated in his office of colonel of the Swiss Guard, gave him the secretariat attached to it.

[3] In his youth, Malleville was a member of the cenacle of the fr:Illustres Bergers, a circle of Catholic ronsardian poets and scholars , in which he was identified with Damon.

His most famous sonnet,[5] La Belle Matineuse, was composed on the occasion of a poetic joust with Vincent Voiture on a theme that goes back to the Latin poet Catullus and was taken up successively by Clément Marot, Joachim du Bellay, Francis I of France, Annibale Caro and François Tristan l'Hermite.

»[8] In addition to his sonnets imitated from the Italian mentioned above (and of which he also treats certain themes in Stances), praised poems of Malleville are his elegy on the death of the Princess of Conti, lover of Bassompierre and perhaps secretly married to him,[9] his paraphrase of Psalm XXX Exaltabo Te Domine[10] and a heroic priapaea on the famous Ethiopian Zaga Christ, which, according to several critics,[11] is his masterpiece.