'Your Excellency should not lend her ear to the calumnies of the malignant. I work honestly, as my conscience dictates; but no one can do without dirt sometimes. The magnificent Madonna Angelica, for example, all last year washed her head with dogs' urine, so as to preserve her hair, which was falling out; and thanked God and me it cured her.' Then, bending down to the duchess's ear, she told the latest gossip:—how the young wife of the Master of the Guild of the Salters, the lovely Madonna Filiberta was deceiving her husband with a Spanish cavalier, and diverting herself hugely.
'And doubtless,' said Beatrice, jestingly threatening with her finger, ''twas you who brought the poor thing to it, you old bawd!'
'Does your Excellency call her poor? Nay, she sings me her thanks every hour. Now she knows the difference between the kiss of a spouse and the kiss of a lover.'
'But the sin? Doth not her conscience bite her?'
'Her conscience? Madam, I hold the sin of love the work of nature. And a few drops of holy water can wash the sin away. Madonna Filiberta is but giving her spouse a Roland for his Oliver.'
'Is your meaning that likewise the husband——'
'Say it for certain, I do not—but sure it is that all married men harp on one string. There is none of them but would sooner have a single hand than a single wife.'
The duchess laughed. 'Ah, Monna Sidonia, Monna Sidonia, there's no tripping you! But where do you learn all these things?'
'Believe the word of an old woman; what I tell you is gospel truth. And in matters of conscience I know the difference between a beam and a mote. All fruit gets ripe in its season. If she have not her fill of love when she be young, a woman will fall into such longing when she is old, that she will go straight into the claws of the devil.'
'You preach like a doctor of theology.'