Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/358

Rh receive me very obligingly. For in his earlier days he had known some of my people both at Court and in the field, and was of his own wish anxious to show me everything. So having led me to the King's bed-chamber, he did show me a phrase of writing by the side of the window on the left hand. "Look, Sir!" he cried, "read yonder words. If you have never seen the hand-writing of the King, mine old master, there it is." And reading it, we found this phrase, "Toute femme varie," writ there in large letters. I had with me a very honourable and very able gentleman of Périgord, my friend, by name M. des Roches, to whom I turned and said quickly: "'Tis to be supposed, some of the ladies he did love best, and of whose fidelity he was most assured, had been found of him to vary and play him false. Doubtless he had discovered some change in them that was scarce to his liking, and so, in despite, did write these words." The porter overhearing us, put in: "Why! surely, surely! make no mistake, for of all the fair dames I have seen and known, never a one but did cry off on a false scent worse than ever his hunting pack did in chasing the stag; yet 'twas with a very subdued voice, for an if he had noted it, he would have brought 'em to the scent again pretty smartly."

They were, 'twould seem, of those women, which can never be content with either their husbands or their lovers, Kings though they be, and Princes and great Lords; but must be ever chopping and changing. Such this good King had found them by experience to be, having himself first debauched the same and taken them from the charge of their husbands or their mothers, tempting them from their maiden or widowed estate.