I have heard even a worse thing of a great Lord and Prince, more than eighty years agone, how that before going to cohabit with his wife, he was used to have himself whipped, not being able to be moved nor to do anything without this ridiculous remedy. I should greatly like some competent physician to tell me the reason hereof.
That great and distinguished author, Pico della Mirandola,[135] doth declare himself to have seen a gallant of his day, who the more he was thrashed with heavy blows of a stirrup-leather, the more was he thereby fierce after women. Never was he so valiant with them as after he had been so leathered, though when it was once well done, he was as fierce as any man. Truly here be some strange and terrible caprices! At any rate to see others whipped is a more agreeable sort of humour than this last!
3
When I was at Milan, I was one day told a diverting tale,—how the late Marquis de Pescaire,[136] dead no long while agone, erst Viceroy of Sicily, did fall deeply in love with a very fair lady. And so one morning, believing her husband was gone abroad, he set forth to visit her, finding her still a-bed; but in conversation with her, he did win naught else but only to see her, gaze at her under the clothes at his leisure, and touch her with his hand. While this was a-doing, lo! the husband did appear, a man which was not of the high consideration of the Marquis in any respect, and did surprise them in such sort that the Marquis had no time to get back his glove, the which was lost some way or another among the sheets, as doth frequently happen. Presently, after exchanging a few words with him, he did leave the chamber, conducted to the door by the husband. The latter on returning did, as chance would have it, discover the Marquis’s glove lost among the sheets, the lady not having noticed the same. This he did take and lock up, and after, putting on a cold demeanour toward his wife, did long remain without sleeping with her or touching her at all. Wherefore one day she being alone in her chamber, did set hand to pen and write this quatrain following:
Vigna era, vigna son.
Era podata, or piu non son;
E non so per qual cagion
Non mi poda il mio patron.
So leaving these verses writ out on the table, anon the husband came and saw the lines; and so taketh pen and doth thus reply: