Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/341

Rh by fault of our widows' not marrying again; for I ween there be more which do re-marry than not, and will pay never a doit of tribute for idle and useless females. And if not by marriage, at any rate in other ways, these Chiotes do make that same organ work and fructify, as I will presently show. 'Tis well too for our maids of France they need not to pay the tax their sisters of Chios be liable to; for these, whether in country or town, if they do come to lose their maidenhead before marriage, and be fain after to continue the trade, be bound to pay once for all a ducat (and surely 'tis a good bargain to compound for all their life after at this price) to the Captain of the Night Watch, so as they may pursue their business as they please, without let or hindrance. And herein doth lie the chiefest and most certain profit this worthy Captain doth come by in his office.

These dames and damsels of this Isle be much different from those of olden days in the same land, which, by what Plutarch saith in his Opuscula, were so chaste for seven hundred years, that never a case was remembered where a married woman had done adultery, or a maid had been deflowered unwed. A miracle! 'twill be said, a mythic tale worthy of old Homer! At any rate be sure they be much other nowadays!

Never was a time when the Greeks had not always some device or other making for wantonness. So in old times we read of a custom in the isle of Cyprus, which 'tis said the kindly goddess Venus, the patroness of that land, did introduce. This was that the maids of that island should go forth and wander along the banks, shores and cliffs of the sea, for to earn their marriage portions by the generous giving of their bodies to mariners, sailors and