Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/339

Rh on his young children. Alackaday! I see plainly I shall have the like ado with you. Woe's me! what shall I do? I do think, an if he can see me from the place he now is in, he will be cursing me finely." What an idea, never to have thought on this afore, nor to have felt remorse but when 'twas all too late! But the husband did soon appease her, and expel this fancy by the best method possible; then next morning throwing wide the chamber window, he did cast forth all memory of the former husband. For is there not an old proverb which saith, "A woman that burieth one husband, will think little of burying another," and another, "There's more grimace than grief, when a woman loseth her husband."

I knew another widow, a great lady, which was quite the opposite of the last, and did not weep one whit the first night. For then, and the second to boot, she did go so lustily to work with her second husband as that they did break down and burst the bedstead, and this albeit she had a kind of cancer on one breast. Yet notwithstanding her affliction, she did miss never a point of amorous delight; and often afterward would divert him with tales of the folly and ineptitude of her former mate. And truly, by what I have heard sundry of either sex tell me, the very last thing a second husband doth desire of his wife is to be entertained with the merits and worth of her first, as though jealous of the poor departed wight, who would like naught so well as to return to earth again; but as for abuse of him, as much of that as ever you please! Natheless there be not a few that will ask their wives about their former lords, as did Cleomenes; but this they do, as feeling themselves to be strong and vigorous; and so delighting to institute comparisons, do