Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/328

Rh husbands and lovers to prefer these hot-loaf dainties; but I have seen many gallant and brave gentlemen no less eager in love, nay! more eager, for old women than for young. They tell me 'twas to get worldly profit of them; but some I have seen also, which did love such with most ardent passion, without winning aught from their purse at all, except that of their person. So have we all seen erstwhile a very great and sovran Prince, which did so ardently love a great dame, a widow and advanced in years, that he did desert his wife and all other women, no matter how young and lovely, for to sleep with her only. Yet herein was he well advised, seeing she was one of the fairest and most delightsome women could ever be seen, and for sure her winter was better worth than the springtide, summer and autumn of the rest. Men which have had dealings with the courtesans of Italy have seen, and do still see, not a few cases where lovers do choose the most famous and long experienced in preference, and those that have most shaken their skirts, hoping with them to find something more alluring in body or in wit. And this is why the beauteous Cleopatra, being summoned of Mark Antony to come see him, was moved with no apprehension, being well assured that, inasmuch as she had known how to captivate Julius Cæsar and Cnæus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, when she was yet but a slip of a girl, and knew not thoroughly the ways and wiles of her trade, she could manage better still her new lover, a very fleshly and coarse soldier of a man, now that she was in the full fruition of her experience and ripe age. Nor did she fail. In fact, the truth is that, while youth is most meet to attract the love of some men, with others 'tis maturity, a sufficient age, a practised wit,