Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/214

Rh should bear every year as many golden apples as it doth common fruit." The second, "I would have a meadow that should yield me jewels and precious stones as many as it doth flowers." The third, which was a maid, "And I would choose a dovecote, whereof the openings should be worth as much to me as such and such a lady's coop, such and such a great King's favourite, whose name I will not speak; only I should like mine to be visited of more pigeons than is hers."

These dames were of a different complexion from a certain Spanish lady, whose life is writ in the History of Spain, and who, one day when Alfonzo the Great, King of Aragon, made a state entry into Saragossa, threw herself on her knees before his Majesty to ask justice of him. The King signifying his willingness to hear her, she did ask to speak to him in private, and he did grant her this favour. Hereupon she laid a complaint against her husband, for that he would lie with her two and thirty times a month, by day no less than a-nights, in such wise that he gave her never a minute of rest or respite. So the King did send for the husband and learned of him 'twas true, the man deeming he could not be in the wrong seeing it was his own wife; then the King's council being summoned to deliberate on the matter, his Majesty did issue decree and ordered that he should touch her but six times,—not without expressing his much marvel at the exceeding heat and puissance of the fellow, and the extraordinary coldness and continence of the wife, so opposite to the natural bent of other women (so saith the story), which be ever ready to clasp hands and beseech their husbands or other men to give them enough of it, and do make sore complaint