Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/435

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formerly lived a king who had three fair daughters. He married them to three dukes; but, unhappily, all their husbands died in the space of one year. The king, being made acquainted with this circumstance, would have had his daughters marry again, and calling the first into his presence, he said:—"My dear daughter, your husband is dead; I will therefore unite you to another." But she would by no means consent, and assigned for it this reason. "If I marry again, I should love my second husband equally with the first; perhaps more, or it might be less. This ought not to be; for my first husband possessed my earliest affection—my