Aelia Laelia Crispis: Not Born, Rising Again

...longer to delay, MOST ILLUSTRIOUS COLBERT; for since those greatest favors, with which you wished me to be bound to you again and again very recently, urged and impelled me to give at least some sign of a grateful heart toward You, this present little work, now finally completed original: "ad umbilicum jam deductum," a classical idiom referring to the finishing of a scroll, literally "brought to the navel.", has opportunely satisfied my wish, which was impatient of further delay. It is, I confess, a slight and meager token of my eternal respect; yet it serves better as a swift acknowledgement of my immense obligation than as a means to discharge any part of so great a debt original: "aes alienum," literally "another's bronze," the standard Latin term for a financial debt.. For indeed, when—at the helpful encouragement of the most learned Abbot de la Chambre Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1594–1669), a French royal physician and intellectual who served as a bridge between Italian scholars and the French court.—I was at that time very humbly dedicating my PAINTERLY FELSINA original: "PICTRICEM FELSINAM," the Latin title for Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice, his most famous work celebrating the history of Bolognese painters. Felsina is the ancient Etruscan name for Bologna. to the Unconquered and ever-Triumphant LOUIS THE GREAT King Louis XIV of France., or rather the Thrice-Greatest—