Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/334

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
320
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

tion de la Mort de Descartes, part in verse, part in prose; the latter, l'Ombre de Descartes.

Mrs. Thicknesse.


DEYSTER, (ANNE) Daughter of a Painter at Bruges, in the Beginning of the eighteenth Century,

Drew well, and employed herself in making copies of her father's works, which were often mistaken for originals. She was likewise a musician; played on all instruments, but particularly excelled on the harpsichord.



DIANA, Duchess of Castres and Angouleme, Dowager of Montmorenci, Daughter of Henry II. King of France by a Piedmontese Lady. Born 1539; died 1619, aged 80.

In 1562, her father married her to Horace Farnese, duke de Castres, second son of the duke of Parma, whom the king protected against the emperor; but he dying in six months, Diana, then fourteen, remained a widow three years, when her hand was offered to Francis de Montmorenci, the eldest son of the constable of France: preoccupied by another passion, the young man resisted alike the entreaties and menaces of his father, and married the object of his first love, although a law had already declared such an union invalid. The constable applied to the ecclesiastical authority; but, before sentence was pronounced, a sudden change took place in the heart of his son; he disavowed his marriage, and became the husband of Diana in 1557.

Diana acceded to the measure only in obedience to

her