The CAQUET DES BÕNES CHAMBERIERES declarant aucunes finesses dont elles Usent Vers leurs maistres et maistresses. Imprimé nouvellement par le commandemēt de leur secretaire maistre Pierre babillet. Booklet in-4, red morocco, triple fillet, spine with 5 nerfs decorated à la grotesque, interior lace, gilt edges (Bauzonnet-Trautz). Not in Bechtel (47/B-1 et seq.) or Brunet (I-1568-1764) // Renouard, 759 // Rothschild, III-2318. (8f.) / A-B4 / 27 lines, gothic car / 88 x 132 mm. Edition unknown to Bechtel, as well as to Brunet (who describes a copy which seems to correspond to ours but gives a different number of lines per page), Fairfax Murray and Tchemerzine. A very rare edition of this facétie en vers sur les chambrières, not listed in bibliographies, and very probably the only copy known. It consists of 8 uncounted leaves. The title appears at the top of the first leaf, with a mid-page vignette depicting Maistre Pierre Babillet being offered a book. The text begins on the verso of this first folio Chãberieres veuillez moy pardõner si ie pretēdz descouvrir vos finesses and ends on the recto of the 8th folio (B4) A dieu ie te dis Guillemette, a folio on the verso of which appears a mark S M attributed by Renouard and Rothschild to Sulpice Mérenget, a Parisian bookseller who officiated on rue Saint-Jacques from 1538 (1531?) to 1548. The copy bears the ex-libris of the Baron de Ruble on the first flyleaf. It appeared in the sale of his library under number 153 and is, according to the description, the only known copy. This card does not give a date, but Émile Picot, in Le Monologue dramatique dans l'ancien théâtre français (1886, p. 20), indicates, on examination of this copy, the approximate date of 1530. The edition was actually printed a few years later, since it bears the mark of Sulpice Mérenget, but it cannot be later than 1550. In fact, from this date onwards, the editions were supplemented by a second facétie that can be dated from its title: Pronostication sur les mariez et femmes veufues pour l'an mil cinq cens et cinquante. Our edition probably dates from around 1540. We have found no information on the name Pierre Babillet, a pseudonym probably inspired by "babillage", and all the bibliographical notes that refer to other editions of this text classify it as Caquet des bonnes chambrières, a classification that we have adopted. 2 small epidermures on the edges. Provenance: Léon Cailhava (I, 21 October 1845, no. 313) and Baron Joseph de Ruble (29 May-3 June 1899, no. 153).