Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/157

Rh credit aught against them; but did accord them as good favour as ever, dying at the last in their very good graces and with many a tear of their shedding to wet his corpse. And they did find good cause to say so too, so soon as ever King Henri III. came to succeed him, who by reason of sundry ill reports he had been told of these ladies when in Poland, did not make near so much of them as he had done aforetime. Both over these and over some others that I know of, he did exercise a very strict censorship, and one we may be sure that made him not more liked; and indeed I do believe they did him no little hurt, and contributed in part to his evil fortune and final ruin. I could allege sundry special facts in proof hereof, but I had rather pass them over,—saying only this much, that women generally are keen set on taking vengeance. It may be long in coming, but they do execute it at the last. On the contrary many men's revenge is just the opposite in its nature, for ardent and hot enough at its first beginning to deceive all, yet by dint of temporising and putting off and long delays it doth grow cool and come to naught. And this is why 'tis meet to guard against the first attempt, and take time by the forelock in parrying the blows; but with women the first fury and attempt, and the temporising and delay, do both last out to the end,—that is in some women, though hardly many.

Some have been for excusing the King for the war he made on women in the way of crying them down, by saying 'twas in order to curb and correct vice,—as if the curb were of any of the slightest use in these cases, seeing woman is so conditioned of nature as that the more this thing is forbid her, the more ardent is she after the same, and to set a watch on her is just labour lost. So in actual