Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme

He travelled in Italy; in Scotland, where he accompanied Mary, Queen of Scots (then the widow of Francis II of France); in England, where he saw Elizabeth I (1561, 1579); in Morocco, where he took part in Don García de Toledo's conquest of Badis (1564); and in Spain and Portugal.

During the Wars of Religion under Charles IX, he fought for the Catholics (including at the siege of La Rochelle), but he allowed himself to be won over temporarily by the ideas of the Huguenot reformers.

[1] A fall from his horse compelled him to retire into private life about 1589, and he spent his last years in writing his Memoirs of the illustrious men and women whom he had known.

There is not an homme illustre or a dame galante in all his gallery of portraits who has not engaged in sexual immorality; and yet the whole is narrated with the most complete unconsciousness that there is anything objectionable in their conduct.

[1] The work was published in 2 volumes by the Golden Cockerel Press under the title The Lives of the Gallant Ladies in 1924 with woodcuts by Robert Gibbings.