In the days of our King Henri III. was a yet worse thing done. A certain gentleman, whom I have known both by name and person, did one day make a present to his mistress of a book of pictures, wherein were shown two and thirty ladies of high or middling rank about the Court, painted in true colours, a-bed and sporting with their lovers, who were likewise represented and that in the most natural way. Some had two or three lovers, some more, some less; and these thirty-two ladies did figure forth more than seven and twenty of the figures or _postures_ of Aretino, and all different. The actors were so well represented and so naturally, as that they did seem actually to be speaking and doing. While some were disrobed, other were shown clad in the very same clothes, and with the same head-dresses, ornaments and weeds as they were commonly to be seen wearing. In a word, so cunningly was the book wrought and painted that naught could be more curious; and it had cost eight or nine hundred crowns, and was illuminated throughout. Now this lady did show it one day and lend it to another, her comrade and bosom friend, which latter was much a favourite and familiar of a great Lady that was in the book, and one of the most vividly and vigorously represented there; so seeing how much it concerned herself, she did give her best attention. Then being curious of all experience, she was fain to look it over with another, a great lady, her cousin and chiefest friend, who had begged her to afford her the enjoyment of the sight, and who was likewise in the pictures, like the rest. So the book was examined very curiously and with the greatest care, leaf by leaf, without passing over a single one lightly, so that they did spend two good hours of the afternoon at the task. The fair ladies, far from being annoyed or angered thereat, did find good cause for mirth therein, seeing them to admire the pictures mightily, and gaze at them fixedly. These two dames were bolder and more valiant and determined than one I have heard tell of, who one day looking at this same book with two others of her friends, so ravished with delight was she and did enter into such an ecstasy of love and so burning a desire to imitate these same luscious pictures, as that she cannot see out of her eyes till the fourth page, and at the fifth did fall in a dead faint. A terrible swoon truly! very different to that of Octavia, sister of Cæsar Augustus, who one day hearing Virgil recite the three verses he had writ on her dead son Marcellus (for which she did give him three thousand crowns for the three alone) did incontinently swoon right away. That was love indeed, but of how different a sort!