If such is the opinion of Saint Augustine, what would he not allow to many women, widows and maids, who to redeem their fathers, kinsmen, yea! sometimes their husbands themselves, do surrender their gentle body under stress of many and sundry trials that fall to their lot, as imprisonment, enslavement, peril to life itself, assaults and takings of cities, and in a word an host of other the like incommodities. Nay! sometimes to gain over captains and soldiers, to cause them to fight stubbornly and hold their ground, or to sustain a siege or retake a place,—I could recount an hundred instances,—they will go the length of fearlessly prostituting their chastity to gain their ends. What evil report or scandal can come to them for this? None surely, but rather much glory and advantage.
Who then will deny it to be a good thing on occasion to be cuckold, forasmuch as a man may draw therefrom such advantages in the way of life saved and favour regained, of honour, dignities and riches? How many do I know in like case; and have heard speak of many more which have been advanced by the beauty and bodies of their wives!
I wish not to offend any, but I will take upon me to say this much, that I have it from not a few, both men and women, how ladies have served their mates right well, and how the merits of some of them have not availed them near so much as their wives’.
I know a great lady of much adroit skill who got the Order of St. Michael bestowed on her husband, he being at that time the only one that had it along with the two greatest Princes of Christendom. She would oft tell him, and say out the same before everybody,—for indeed she was of merry demeanour and excellent company: “Ha, ha! my friend, you might have sweated yourself many a long day before you got this pretty bauble to hang at your neck!”
I have heard speak of a great man,[57*] in the days of King Francis, who having received the Order, and being fain to make boast thereof one day before M. de la Chastaigneraie, my uncle, did say to him: “Ah! how glad would you be to have this Order hanging at your neck like me!” My uncle, who was ready of tongue and high of hand and hot-tempered, if ever man was, straight replied: “I had rather be dead than have it by the way you had it by!” The other answered never a word, for he knew the man he had to deal with.
I have heard the story told of a great Lord, whose wife had begged for him the patent appointing him to one of the great offices of his district and did bring it to him in his house, his Prince having bestowed it upon him only by favour of his wife. But he would in no wise accept it, forasmuch as he was aware his wife had tarried three months with the Prince in high favour, and not without suspicions of something worse. Herein he did manifest the same nobility of spirit he had shown all his life; yet at the last he did take it, after having done a thing I had rather not name.[58*]
And this is how fair ladies have made as many knights as battles, and more,—the which I would name, knowing their names as well as another, were it not I desired to avoid speaking ill of any, or making scandal. And if they have given them these honours, they have brought them much riches as well.
I know one who was but a poor devil when he first brought his wife to Court, the which was a very beautiful woman. And lo! in less than two years they were in good ease and become very rich folk.
9.
