Aubespine, Magdalene D'

, daughter of Claude d’Aubespine, baron of Chateauneuf, and wife of Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroi, secretary of state, was a French lady whose beauty and talents rendered her one of the ornaments of the courts of Charles IX. Henry III. and Henry IV. Ronsard has celebrated her in a sonnet, in which he quaintly advises her to substitute the laurels she had merited for the hawthorn (aubespine) which composed her name. She died at Villeroi in 1506, and Bertaud, bishop of Seez, wrote an epitaph on her. She is said to have translated Ovid’s epistles, and to have written several original works in verse and prose, none of which, however, we find specified in our authorities. Her statue, in white marble, is in the present French museum. ²