I could bring forward a whole host of their intrigues, and their divers appetites and curious preferences. But I should never get me done at that rate; beside what would such tales be worth, unless the subjects were given by name and surname. But this is a thing I will not do at any price, for I desire to bring shame on no woman; and I have made profession to avoid in this my book all evil-speaking whatsoever, so that none may have aught to reproach me with on the score of scandal-mongering. However to tell my tales, suppressing the names, in this can be no harm. I do leave my readers to guess the persons intended; and many a time they will suppose it to be one, though all the while ’tis quite another.
3.
Now just as we do see different sorts of wood of such different nature, that some will burn when quite green, as the ash and the beech, but others, be they as dry, old and well seasoned as you please, for instance the elm, the alder and others, do burn only as slowly and tediously as possible, while many others, following the general nature of all dry and old wood, do blaze up in their dryness and oldness so rapidly and suddenly ’tis rather a destroying and instant reducing to ashes than burning proper, so is the like true of women, whether maids, wives or widows. Some, so soon as ever they be come to the first greenness of their age, do burn so easily and well, you would say from their very mother’s womb they do draw thence an amorousness; as did the fair Laïs from her fair mother Tymandra, that most famous harlot, and an hundred thousand others which herein do take after the good whores their mothers. Nay! sometimes they do not so much as wait for the age of maturity, that may be put at twelve or thirteen, to begin loving, but are at it sooner yet. This happened not twelve years agone at Paris to a pastry-cook’s child, which was discovered to be pregnant at nine years of age.[93] The girl being very sick with her pregnancy, and her father having taken a specimen of her urine to a physician, the latter said at once she had no other sickness but only that she was with child. “What!” cried the father; “Why, Sir! my daughter is only nine years old.” Who so astonished as the doctor? “’Tis all one,” said he; “of a surety, she is with child.” And after examining her more closely, he did indeed find her so. The child afterward confessing with whom she had had to do, her gallant was condemned to death by the judges, for having gone with her at so very tender an age. I much regret I have come to give this example and mention the thing here, seeing I had made up my mind not to sully my paper with suchlike mean folk, but to deal only with great and well-born persons.
Herein I have somewhat gone wide of my purpose, but the story being so rare and uncommon, I must e’en be excused.
This doth remind me of a tale of a brave and gallant Lord if ever there was one, since dead, which was one day making complaint of the amplitude of women’s affairs with whom he had had to do, as well maids as married ladies. He declared ’twould come to his having to look for mere children, just come from the cradle so to speak, so as not to find so wide a space of open sea as he had done with the rest, but get better pleasure by swimming in a narrow strait. An if he had addressed these words to a certain great and honourable dame I do know, she would have made him the same answer she did to another gentleman of the great world, to whom, on his making a like complaint, she did retort thus: “I wot not which hath better cause of complaint, you men of our width and over amplitude, or we women of your tenuity and over smallness, or rather your tiny, tiny littleness; truly we have as much to lament in you as ever you in us.”
The lady was right enough in what she said. Similarly another great lady, one day at Court looking curiously at the great bronze Hercules in the fountain at Fontainebleau, as she was a-walking with an honourable gentleman which did escort her, his hand beneath her arm, did complain that the said Hercules, albeit excellently well wrought and figured otherwise, was not so well proportioned in all his members as should be, forasmuch as his middle parts were far too small and out of proper measure, in no wise corresponding to his huge colossus of a body. The gentleman replied he did not agree with what she said, for ’twas to be supposed that in those days ladies were not so wide as at the present.
A very great lady and noble Princess[94] learning how that certain folk had given her name to a huge great culverin, did ask the reason why. Whereupon one present answered: “’Tis for this, Madam, because it hath a calibre greater and wider than all the rest.”
Si est-ce pourtant qu’elles y ont trouvé assez de remède, et en trouvent tous les jours assez pour rendre leurs portes plus étroites, carrées et plus malaisées d’entrée; dont aucunes en usent, et d’autres non; mais nonobstant, quand le chemin y est bien battu et frayé souvent par continuelle habitation et fréquentation, ou passages d’enfants, les ouvertures de plusieurs en sont toujours plus grandes et plus larges. Je me suis là un peu perdu et dévoyé; mais puisque ç’a été à propos il n’y a point de mal, et je retourne à mon chemin.
Many other young girls there be which let safely pass this early, tender, sappy time of life, waiting a greater maturity and dryness, whether because they be naturally cold at first beginning and start, or that they be kept close guarded, as is very needful with some. Others there be so steadfast, the winds and tempests of winter would avail naught to shake or stir them. Others again be so foolish and simple-minded, so raw and ignorant, as that they would not so much as hear the name of love. So have I heard of a woman which did affect the virtuous prude, that an if she did hear the word harlot mentioned, she would instantly faint. A friend telling this story to a certain great Lord in presence of his wife, the latter did exclaim: “She’d better not come here, that woman; for if she doth faint to hear speak of whores, she’ll die right out to see one.”
On the other hand there be some girls which from the first moment they begin to feel they have a heart, grow so tame they will eat from the hand at once. Others be so devout and scrupulous, fearing so sore the commandments of the Lord our God, that they do quite neglect that of love. Yet have I seen many of these same devout patterers of prayers, these women that be forever a-kissing of images and all but living in churches, which did under this hypocritical veil cover and conceal the fire of their passions, to the end that by such false and feigned semblance the world might perceive never a trace of them, but deem them perfect prudes, or even half way to being saints like St. Catherine of Sienna, by the which professions they have often succeeded in deceiving all mankind. Thus have I heard it related of a very great Princess, a Queen indeed, now dead, who when she was fain to make love to any man, (for she was exceeding given that way), would invariably begin her conversation with the love we do owe to God, and then suddenly bring it round to carnal love, and what she did want of her interlocutor, whereof she did before long come to the practice or quintessential part. This is how these devotees, or bigots rather, do cajole us men; such of us that is as be not well versed in wiles of the sort and know not life.