Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/347

Rh meat, as folks do then. "No!" she said, I do not."—"So I have observed," returned the gentleman; "I have noted you made no scruple, but did eat meat at that season just as at any other, both raw and cooked."—"That was at the time mine husband was alive; now I am a widow, I have reformed and regulated my living more seemly." "Nay! beware," then said the other, "of fasting so strictly, for it doth readily happen to such as go fasting and anhungered, that anon, when the desire of meat cometh on them, they do find their vessels so narrow and contracted, as that they do thereby suffer much incommodity."—"Nay! that vessel of my body," said the lady, "that you mean, is by no means so narrow or hunger-pinched, but that, when mine appetite shall revive, I may not afford it good and sufficient refreshment."

I knew another great lady, which all through her unmarried and married life was in all men's mouths by reason of her exceeding stoutness. Afterward she came to lose her husband, and did mourn him with so extreme a sorrow that she grew as dry as wood. Yet did she never cease to indulge her in the joys of former days, even going so far as to borrow the aid of a certain Secretary she had, and of other such to boot, and even of her cook, so 'twas reported. For all that, she did not win back her flesh, albeit the said cook, who was all fat and greasy, ought surely, I ween, to have made her fat. So she went on, taking now one, now another of her servingmen, all the while playing the part of the most prudish and virtuous dame in all the Court, with pious phrases ever on her lips, and naught but scandal against all other women, and never a word of good for any of them. Of like sort was that noble woman of Dauphiné, in the Cent