The passionate love of Henri III for Marie de Clèves serves as the backdrop to this captivating story. Inspired by this tale, the poet Ronsard composed the sonnet “On the Death of Marie” in 1578: “Thus in your first and youthful novelty, When the earth and the sky honored your beauty, The Fates killed you, and ashes you rest. For obsequies receive my tears and my weeping, This vase full of milk, this basket full of flowers, So that alive and dead, your body is only roses.”