Bardelys the Magnificent

Being on Account of the Strange Wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardelys, and of the things that in the course of it befell him in Languedoc, in the year of the Rebellion

Publication date: 1906

Text online: http://www.fullbooks.com/Bardelys-the-Magnificent.html

The "Rebellion" mentioned in the title is that of the Duke of Montmorency against Louis XIII, and this dates the novel unquestionably to 1632. The opening party we know takes place in August. Can we fix the date?

Bardelys sees the King the day after the opening party, leaves the same day and journeys in three days from Paris to Pont-le-Duc near Tours, remains there fifteen days, then continues to Montauban, arriving on September 1. ("On the morrow" of his arrival "there were tellings of a battle fought the day before at Castelnaudary" [Chapter III].)

Now Montauban is about twice as far from Tours as Tours from Paris, so that part of the journey must have taken about six days. Taking all these together, we find that the opening party probably took place on Friday August 6—possibly a bit earlier, but certainly not much later.