Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume I.djvu/315

Rh movements, being shod with a pretty little high-heeled shoe, thinly soled, or else a white slipper, pointed, not square-toed in front; but the white is the most daintiest. But these little high-heeled shoes and pumps be for big, tall women, not for the short and dwarfish ones, which do have their great horse-shoes with soles two feet thick. One had as lief as these see a giant's club on the swing, or a fool's bawble.

Another thing a woman should beware of is the disguising her sex and dressing herself as a boy, whether for a masquerade or for any other occasion. For so attired, though she have the finest leg in the world, yet doth she look ill-shapen in that part, seeing all things have their proper setting and suitable array. Thus in falsifying of their sex, they do altogether disfigure their beauty and natural grace.

This is why 'tis not becoming for a woman to dress as a boy for to display her charms to the more advantage,—unless indeed it be merely to don a dainty, gallant cap with the Guelf or Ghibelline feather stuck therein, or perched above the brow, in such wise to be distinctively neither male nor female, after the fashion our ladies have of late adopted. Yet even this doth not suit all women equally well; the face must be saucy and of just the right expression to carry it off, as we have seen in the case of our Queen Marguerite of Navarre. Her it did suit so well that, seeing her face only when she was so bedecked, no man could tell which sex she came the nearer to, whether she more looked the handsome boy or the beautiful woman she really was.

This doth remind me of another lady of the great world, and one I knew, which wishing to imitate the same