In this letter Mark Antony was for extolling his own constancy, and reproaching the other’s changeableness, for loving so many women at once, while himself did love only the Queen. And I only wonder Octavius did not love her too after Antony’s death. It may well be he had his pleasure when he had her come alone to his chamber, and he there beheld her beauty and heard her address him; or mayhap he found her not so fair as he had thought, or scorned her for some other reason, and did wish to make his triumph of her at Rome and show her in his public procession. But this indignity she did forestall by her self-inflicted death. There can be no doubt, to return to our first point, that when a woman is fain after love, or is once well engaged therein, no orator in all the world can talk better than she. Consider how Sophonisba hath been described to us by Livy, Appian and other writers, and how eloquent she did show herself in Massinissa’s case, when she did come to him for to win over and claim his love, and later again when it behooved to swallowed the fatal poison. In short, every woman, to be well loved, is bound to possess good powers of speech; and in very deed there be few known which cannot speak well and have not words enough to move heaven and earth, yea! though this were fast frozen in mid winter. Above all must they have this gift which devote themselves to love. If they can say naught, why! they be so savourless, the morsel they give us hath neither taste nor flavour. Now when M. du Bellay, speaking of his mistress and declaring her ways, in the words, De la vertu je sçavois deviser, Et je sçavois tellement éguiser, Que rien qu’honneur ne sortait de ma bouche; Sage au parler et folastre à la couche. (Of virtue I knew how to discourse, and hold such fair language, naught but honour did issue from my mouth; modest in speech, and wanton a-bed.) doth describe her as “modest in speech, and wanton a-bed,”[119] this means of course in speaking before company and in general converse. Yet when that she is alone and in private with her lover, every gallant dame is ready enough to be free of her speech and to say what she chooseth, the better to provoke his passion.