Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/353

Rh Coming to Court, after an absence of six months, he there beheld a lady which was used to attend the academy, lately introduced at Court by the late King. "Why!" saith he, "doth the academy then still exist? I was told it had been abolished."—"Can you doubt," a courtier answered him, "her attendance? Why! her master is teaching her philosophy, which doth speak and treat of perpetual motion." And in good sooth, for all the beating of brains these same philosophers do undergo, to discover perpetual motion, yet is there none more surely so than the motion Venus doth teach in her school.

A lady of the great world did give even a better answer of another, whose beauty they were extolling highly, only that her eyes did ever remain motionless, she never turning the same one way or the other. "We must suppose," she said, "all her care doth go to move other portions of her body, and so hath she none to spare for her eyes."

However, an if I would put down in writing all the witty words and good stories I know, to fill out my matter, I should never get me done. And so, seeing I have other subjects to attack, I will desist, and finish with this saying of Boccaccio, already cited above, namely, that women, maids, wives and widows alike, at least the most part of them, be one and all inclined to love. I have no thought to speak of common folk, whether in country or in town, for such was never mine intention in writing, but only of well-born persons, in whose service my pen is aye ready to run nimbly. But for mine own part, if I were asked my true opinion, I should say emphatically there is naught like married women, all risk and peril on their husbands' side apart, for to win good enjoyment