Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume I.djvu/307

Rh armed enjoying women, having neither the time nor patience to disarm before satisfying their lust and appetite, so fierce and eager are they. But to see soldier and woman both armed in cohabitation together is a thing seldom seen.

Well, well! enough! we must needs make an end,—albeit I could have filled out this discourse to more ample length by not a few other examples, had I not feared to seem over wanton, and incur an ill repute of naughtiness.

However, after so much praise of fair ladies, I do feel me bound to repeat the words of a Spaniard, who one day wishing ill to a woman, did describe her in very proper terms to me thus:

''Señor, vieja es como la lampada azeytunada d'iglesia, y de hechura del armario, larga y desvayada, el color y gesto como mascara mal pintada, el talle como una campana o mola de el andar y vision d'una antigua fantasma de la noche, que tanto tuviese encontrar-la de noche, como ver una mandragora. Iesus! Iesus! Dios me libre de su mal encuentro! No se contenta de tener en su casa por huesped al provisor del obisbo, ni se contenta con la demasiada conversacion del vicario ni del guardian, ni de la amistad antigua del dean, sino que agora de nuevo ha tomado al que pide para las animas del purgatorio, para acabar su negra vida;''—"Sir! look at her! She is like an old, greasy Church lamp. Form and shape are those of a great aumry, all mis-shapen and ill made; complexion and features like a badly drawn mask; figure as shapely as a monastery bell or a great millstone. Her face is like an old idol; her look and gait like an antic ghost that walks by night. I should be as sore afraid to meet her in the dark as to face a horrid mandrake. The good