Heavens! how many of the sort have I known, who were forever inviting their kinsmen and friends and comrades to come and visit their wives, going so far as to make banquets for them, the better to attract them. Then, when they were there, they would leave them alone with the lady in bedchamber or closet, and so away, with the words, “I leave my wife in your care.” One I knew, a nobleman of the great world, of such behaviour you would have said his whole happiness did rest in this only, to be cuckolded. He seemed to make it his study to give opportunities therefor, and especially never forgot to say this first word, “My wife is in love with you; do you love her as well as she loves you, I wonder?” Many a time when he saw his wife with her admirer, he would carry off the company from the room to take a walk, leaving the twain of them together, so giving them good leisure to discuss their loves. And if by any chance he had to return of a sudden into the room, from the very bottom step of the stairs he would begin shouting aloud, calling after someone, spitting or coughing, to the end he might not catch the lovers in the act. For commonly, even though one know of them and suspect their coming, these peeps and surprises are scarce pleasant whether to the one party or the other. This same Lord was having a fine mansion built one time, and the master mason having asked whether he would not have the cornices _h_orn-amented, he made answer, “I don’t know what _h_ornamentation means. Go and ask my wife who understands the thing, and knows geometry; and whatever she tells you to do, do it.” Still worse was it with one I know of, who one day selling one of his estates to a purchaser for fifty thousand crowns, did take forty-five thousand of the sum in gold and silver, and in lieu of the remaining five accepted a unicorn’s horn. Huge laughter amid them that knew him; “Ha, ha!” they said, “as if he had not enough horns at home already, that he must fit in this one to boot.”