ABSTRACT
Bruno was in sad plight: stranded in a strange country, unable to speak its language and with a lank purse at his girdle. He found a saviour in the French Ambassador. Castelnau, he tells us, rescued him “from these doctors and from hunger”; he proved a “firm and effective defender … a solid, secure and enduring rock.” 1 The Ambassador was himself in pecuniary straits: his salary was irregularly paid and he was obliged to borrow money, 2 but he gave the wandering Italian scholar a home. “You did not maintain a man in your household of whom you had need, but one who stood in need of you in many ways,” Bruno wrote him. 3 “I remained in his house as his gentleman—merely that.” 4 Doubtless Castelnau found him of service; Bruno frequently accompanied him to the Court of Elizabeth, and the French Ambassador, in want of money, might have been glad of the aid of an unofficial secretary at no great cost.
