I knew another very high-born lady, and one of the fairest women in all the world, which being new widowed, and making pretence she cared not, in view of her new weeds and state of widowhood, to go of evenings after supper either to visit the Court, or the dance, or the Queen’s _couchée_, and was fain not to seem worldly-minded, did never leave her chamber, but suffering all and sundry of her attendants, male and female, to hie them to the dance, and her son and every soul about her, or even actually sending them thither, would retire to her secret chamber. And thither her lover of old, well treated, loved and favoured of her in her married life, would presently arrive. Or else, having supped with her, he would stay on and never leave her, sitting out a certain brother-in-law, who was much by way of guarding the fair lady from ill. So there would they practise and renew their former loves, and indulge in new ones preparatory to a second wedlock, the which was duly accomplished the following Summer. Well! by all I can see after duly considering the circumstances, I do believe no other season could have been so favourable for their projects as Winter was, as indeed I did overhear one of her dainty, intriguing maids also declare. So now, to draw to an end, I do maintain and declare: that all seasons be meet for love, when they be chosen suitably, and so as to accord with the caprice of the men and women which do adopt the same. For just as War, that is Mars’ pastime, is made at all seasons and times, and just as the God doth give his victories as it pleaseth him, and according as he doth find his fighting men well armed and of good spirit to offer battle, so doth Venus in like wise, according as she doth find her bands of lovers, men and maids, well disposed for the fray. Indeed the seasons have scarce aught to do therewith, and which of them is taken and which chosen doth make but little difference. Nor yet do their simples, or fruits, their drugs, or drug-dealers, nor any artifice or device that women do resort to, much avail them, whether to augment their heat, or to refresh and cool the same. For indeed, as to this last, I do know a great lady, whose mother, from her childhood up, seeing her of a complexion so hot and lecherous that it was like to take her one fine day straight on the road to the brothel, did make her use sorrel-juice constantly by the space of thirty years regularly at all her meals, whether with her meat or in her soups and broths, or to drink great two-handled bowls full thereof unmixed with other viands; in one word every sauce she did taste was sorrel-juice, sorrel-juice, everlastingly. Yet were these mysterious and cooling devices all in vain, for she ended by becoming a right famous and most arrant harlot,—one that had never need of those pasties I have spoke of above to give her heat of body, seeing she had enough and to spare of her own. Yet is this lady as greedy as any to eat of these same dishes!