No pains were spared to deter women from this enormity. St. Jerome holds up the fate of Prætexta as a warning to all ladies addicted to the fashion of the world. Prætexta was a very respectable lady, married to a somewhat paganish husband, Hymetius. Their niece, Eustochia, resided with them. At the instigation of the husband, Prætexta took the shy Eustochia in hand, attired her in a splendid dress, and covered her fair neck with ringlets. Having enjoyed the sight of the modest maiden so attired, Prætexta went to bed. To that bedside immediately descended an angel, with wrath upon his brow, and billows of angry sounds rolling from his lips. “Thou hast,” said the spirit, “obeyed thy husband rather than the Lord, and hast dared to deck the hair of a virgin, and made her look like a daughter of earth. For this do I wither up thy hands, and bid them recognize the enormity of thy crime in the amount of thy anguish and bodily suffering. Five months more shalt thou live, and then Hell shall be thy portion; and if thou art bold enough to touch the head of Eustochia again, thy husband and thy children shall die even before thee.” St. Jerome pledges himself for the truth of this story, which is exceedingly perplexing and utterly unintelligible. The ladies were more difficult of management than the clergy. The former were not to be terrified by the assurance, that breaking an ordinance of men was a worse crime than breaking one of the commandments of God. The hair of the clergy was kept straight, by decree of forfeiture of revenues or benefice against incumbents who approached the altars with curls even of their natural hair. Pomades and scented waters were denounced as damnable inventions; but anathema was uttered against the priest guilty of wearing one single hair combed up above its fellows. The well-curled Bishop of Oxford would have been in the olden time _ipso facto_, because of being so curled, excommunicated,—according to the decree of the Council of Lateran (Gregory II.), which says:—“Cuicumque ex clericis comam relaxaverit, anathema sit!” “All personal disguise,” says Tertullian, “is adultery before God. All perukes, paint, and powder are such disguises, and inventions of the devil;” _ergo_, etc. This zealous individual appeals to personal as often as to religious feeling. “If you will not fling away your false hair,” says he, “as hateful to Heaven, cannot I make it hateful to yourselves, by reminding you that the false hair you wear may have come not only from a criminal but from a very dirty head, perhaps from the head of one already damned?”