Well, well! enough! we must needs make an end,—albeit I could have filled out this discourse to more ample length by not a few other examples, had I not feared to seem over wanton, and incur an ill repute of naughtiness. However, after so much praise of fair ladies, I do feel me bound to repeat the words of a Spaniard, who one day wishing ill to a woman, did describe her in very proper terms to me thus: _Señor, vieja es como la lampada azeytunada d’iglesia, y de hechura del armario, larga y desvayada, el color y gesto como mascara mal pintada, el talle como una campana o mola de el andar y vision d’una antigua fantasma de la noche, que tanto tuviese encontrar-la de noche, como ver una mandragora. Iesus! Iesus! Dios me libre de su mal encuentro! No se contenta de tener en su casa por huesped al provisor del obisbo, ni se contenta con la demasiada conversacion del vicario ni del guardian, ni de la amistad antigua del dean, sino que agora de nuevo ha tomado al que pide para las animas del purgatorio, para acabar su negra vida_;—“Sir! look at her! She is like an old, greasy Church lamp. Form and shape are those of a great aumry, all mis-shapen and ill made; complexion and features like a badly drawn mask; figure as shapely as a monastery bell or a great millstone. Her face is like an old idol; her look and gait like an antic ghost that walks by night. I should be as sore afraid to meet her in the dark as to face a horrid mandrake. The good Jesus keep me from such an encounter! The Bishop’s Ordinary is her constant guest, but she is not satisfied; the garrulous Vicar and the good old Dean are her oldest friends, but she is not content. She must needs entangle now the Pardoner for poor souls in Purgatory, to complete the infamy of her black and odious life.” Observe how the Spaniard, which hath so well described the thirty beauties of a fair lady (have I not quoted them above, in this same Discourse?), can, when he so wills, abuse the sex with the like gusto. [Illustration: Decorative scrollwork above chapter start] THIRD DISCOURSE Concerning the beauty of a fine leg, and the virtue the same doth possess. 1.