Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/137

Rh, their kinsman, who did possess a good share of the Pope's favour, to ask of him dispensation for the three of them to eat meat on prohibited days. This the said Duke did promise them to do, and to that end did one day bring them on a friendly footing to the Pope's lodging. Meantime he had warned the King of what was a-foot, telling him he would afford him some sport. So having put him up to the game, and the three ladies being on their knees before his Holiness, M. d'Albanie took the word first, saying in a low tone and in Italian, so that the ladies did not catch his words: "Holy Father, see here before you three widow ladies, fair to look on and very well born. These same for the respect they bear toward their dead husbands and the love they have for the children they have borne to these, will not for aught in all the world marry again and so wrong their husbands and children. But whereas they be sometimes sore tempted by the pricks of the flesh, they do therefore humbly beseech your Holiness for leave to go with men without marriage, whenever and wherever they shall find them under the said temptation."—"What say you, cousin?" cried the Pope. "Why! 'twould be against God's own commandments, wherefrom I can give no dispensation." "Well! the ladies are here before you, Holy Father, and if it please you to hear them say their say." At this one of the three, taking the word, said: "Holy Father! we have besought M. d'Albanie to make you our very humble petition for us three poor women, and to represent to your Holiness our frailty and our weakly complexion."—"Nay! my daughters," replied the Pope, "but your petition is in no wise reasonable, for the thing would be clean against God's commandments." Then the widows, still quite ignorant of what M. d'Albanie