Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/238

Rh but to laugh, and make sport and pastime, and never time to hear or dream of anything else but only their little amusements. I have known many such which had rather hear a fiddle play, or dance or leap or run, than hearken to any love discourse whatsoever; while other some do so adore the chase they should better be called servants of Diana than of Venus. I did once know a brave and valiant Lord, since dead, which fell so deep in love with a maid, and a great lady to boot, that he was like to die; "for whenas I am fain," he used to say, "to declare my passion, she doth answer me never a word but about her dogs and her hunting. I would to heaven I were metamorphosed into a hunting-dog or greyhound, and my soul entered in their body, according to Pythagoras' opinion, to the end she might give some heed to my love, and I be healed of my wound." Yet afterward did he leave her, for he was not good lackey or huntsman enough to go everywhere a-following her about, wherever her lusty humours, her pleasures and amusements might lead her.

Yet must we note one fact. Maids of this sort, after leaving their chickenhood behind and outgrowing the pip, (as we say of poultry), having taken their fill of these childish amusements, do always come, at long last, to essay a woman's pleasures too. Such young girls do resemble little wolf-cubs, which be so pretty, engaging and playful in their downy youth; yet being come to maturity, they do ever take to evil courses and ravening and killing. The sort of girls I am speaking of do ever the like, who after much sport and youthful merriment, after pleasures of all kinds, hunting, dancing, leaping, skipping and jigging, do always, I ween, indulge at last in dame Venus' gentle sport. In a word, to put it briefly,