This is why ’tis not becoming for a woman to dress as a boy for to display her charms to the more advantage,—unless indeed it be merely to don a dainty, gallant cap with the Guelf or Ghibelline feather stuck therein, or perched above the brow, in such wise to be distinctively neither male nor female, after the fashion our ladies have of late adopted. Yet even this doth not suit all women equally well; the face must be saucy and of just the right expression to carry it off, as we have seen in the case of our Queen Marguerite of Navarre. Her it did suit so well that, seeing her face only when she was so bedecked, no man could tell which sex she came the nearer to, whether she more looked the handsome boy or the beautiful woman she really was. This doth remind me of another lady of the great world, and one I knew, which wishing to imitate the same mode when about twenty-five years of age, and altogether over tall and big statured, a great masculine looking woman and but lately come to Court, and thinking to play the gallant dame, did one day appear so attired in the ball-room. Nor did she fail to be much stared at and rallied not a little on her costume. Even the King himself did pronounce his judgement thereon, for indeed he was one of the wittiest men in his realm, and declared she did resemble a mountebank’s wench, or still better one of those painted figures of women that are imported from Flanders and set up in front of the chimney-pieces in inns and taverns with German flutes at their lips. In fact he went so far as to have her told that if she did appear any more in that dress and get-up, he would order her to bring her flute with her for to play a merry greeting to the noble company withal and divert them with her music. Such cruel sport did he make of her, as well because the said head-gear did so ill suit her as for a grudge he had against her husband. So we see such masquerading doth not suit all ladies alike. For when this same Queen of Navarre, the fairest woman in all the world, was pleased to adopt a further disguise beyond the cap, she did never appear so fair as she really was, nor ever would have. And indeed what shape could she have taken more beauteous than her own, seeing there is none better she could have borrowed from any in all the world? And if she had chose to show her leg, the which I have heard sundry of her women describe as the finest and best ever known, otherwise than in its proper form, and appearing well and fitly stockinged and shod below her fine clothes, never would it have been deemed so handsome as it was. Thus with a due regard to surroundings doth it behove fair ladies to show and make display of their beauties. 2.