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shall take care of ordering all my household goods from food to firewood. Janet Sinclair says I must go through all my clothes and gowns and see what is worn out and what I have outgrown. Mary Fleming is the tiniest of the four Marys, and I shall give to her all those clothes that are still perfect but too small. The others I shall distribute among the three other Marys so they can give them to their favourite servants. This will annoy Madame de Parois to no end, for she likes to give them to her closest friends in exchange for favours and sometimes she even sells them.

January 5, 1554
    Puff gave birth to two little puppies this morning! They are no bigger than thimbles! The four Marys and I are so excited. We fear, however, that Puff might not have enough milk. I have sent Monsieur Jallet to search out a wet-nurse dog for our puppies. He looked a bit surprised but went off cheerfully.

Later
    No wet-nurse dog yet, but Mary Beaton had a very good idea. We are taking embroidery thread and dipping it into bowls of milk and then letting the two little “thimbles” suck.

January 6, 1554
    Alas, one little thimble died last night just after we came back from the midnight banquet for Twelfth Night. To think that while we were dancing and listening to minstrels and watching jugglers, the little pup was gasping his last. We are planning a funeral. How sad – my second entertainment as head of my own household is to be a funeral. I sent word to Father Confessor Mamerot to meet us in Les Champs du Repos, the pet cemetery here at Blois.

January 7, 1554
    Because of the funeral the four Marys and Francis and Elizabeth and Claude and I decided to delay giving our Twelfth Night presents. So we did it this morning when we had our hot chocolate. I had embroidered small purses for the four Marys, which they loved. For Princesses Elizabeth and Claude I had embroidered small covers for their books from which they shall begin their studies of Greek and Latin. But the best gift that I gave was for Francis. It, too, was a book with an embroidered cover but filled with blank pages. On the very first page I had written in beautiful gilt script, almost as good as the royal calligrapher, the words Le Registre de la Chasse du Dauphin, Francois [The Record of the Hunt of the Dauphin, Francis]. It is a book for him to record his successes when hunting. Francis loves to hunt and has already killed two wild boars, which is very good for someone who is not even eleven and of such a frail constitution. But he is an excellent horseman and superb with the bow. As a wonderful surprise the King arrived and gave each of us a present, including a lovely sapphire pendant for me that is encircled with pearls. He also, and I felt this was so kind, extended his sympathies for the little pup and asked to see how the other one is doing. Quite well, I am pleased to say. We have named him Thimble.

January 9, 1554
    We prepare to go to Paris, the Louvre Palace. It is not one of our favourite places, but the happy news is that we shall be there only awhile and then shall go to Château Chambord in the Loire Valley, which indeed is one of our favourite places and where Francis’s and my best horses are. His two are Fontaine and Enghiene, and mine are Bravane and Madame la Reale. There will be hunting for two weeks or more and then on to Chenonceau, another favourite château of ours, where there is usually good ice skating.

January 10, 1554
    It is said that the reason we are rushing off to Paris is because Queen Catherine seeks a new astrologer. She is disenchanted with Ruggieri for he had predicted a robust, healthy baby boy before she miscarried. There is talk of another astrologer who is supposed to have immense powers of prediction. He is known as Nostradamus, and it has been arranged for him to be at the Louvre Palace. They even say that he shall occupy the old observatory. That indeed would make him the Queen’s First Astrologer. If Michel Nostradamus can make