[Ambroise Paré in French literature]

The 16th century by its passionate side has been the favourite one of authors of historical novels in which among the heroes of "cloak and dagger stories" appears sometime Ambroise Paré. Alexandre Dumas (the father) has shown him at the court of Charles IX in La Reine Margot (1845) where he does not however play a great role. On the contrary, Balzac in Le Martyr calviniste (1842) has given him a capital part close to the dying François II, whom he intended to trepanize but had to give up this idea as a consequence of the opposition of the queen-mother Catherine de Médicis. In the present century, Robert Merle in Paris ma bonne ville (Fortune de France, 3, 1980) shows Paré at the time of the Saint Barthélemy.