Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/320

Rh In short I should never have done, an if I were for enumerating all such cases. Wherefore I do stop, both for brevity's sake, and also for fear I be reproached for that I indulge overmuch in digressions. Yet is this one not inopportune I have made, when speaking of Vittoria Colonna which did marry the Abbé. An if she had not married again with him, she had better deserved her name and title of Vittoria, by being victorious over herself. Seeing she could not find a second husband to match the first, she should have refrained her altogether.

I have known many ladies which have copied her however. One I knew did marry one of mine uncles, the most brave, valiant and perfect gentleman of his time. After his death, she did marry another as much like him as an ass to a Spanish charger; but 'twas mine uncle was the Spanish steed. Another lady I knew once, which had wedded a Marshal of France, a handsome, honourable gentleman and a valiant; in second wedlock she did take one in every way his opposite, and one that had been a Churchman too. What was yet more blameworthy in her was this, that on going to Court, where she had not appeared for twenty years, not indeed since her second marriage, she did re-adopt the name and title of her first husband. This is a matter our courts of law and parliament should look into and legislate against; for I have seen an host of others which have done the like, herein unduly scorning their later husbands, and showing them unwilling to bear their name after their death. For having committed the fault, why! they should drink the cup to the dregs and feel themselves bound by what they have done.

Another widow I once knew, on her husband's dying,