This study examines the first of the two discourses pronounced by Léger Duchesne in auditorio regio, which have been printed and transmitted to posterity. A royal reader of rhetoric and Latin letters, Duchesne delivered an oration in January 1580 during which he praised the Valois kings as the creators and protectors of the College of Royal Readers (now the Collège de France). He drew on his own experiences as a young student during the time of Louis XII and Francis I in order to underscore the greatness of the institution that constitutes one of the chief glories of France. Duchesne pointedly addressed, successively and in chronological order, each of the Valois kings with the exception of Henri II. His epideictic eloquence revealed a rich Latin culture, testified by the echoes of Virgil, Quintilian, Cicero and Horace, whom the orator encountered for the first time when, as a young man, he attended the courses of the readers. Thus, this dual eulogy of the royal lineage of the Valois and of the institution of royal readers was based on an "autobiographical" account that culminated with a eulogy of Henri III, master of the Palace Academy.