This doth remind me of a tale of a brave and gallant Lord if ever there was one, since dead, which was one day making complaint of the amplitude of women’s affairs with whom he had had to do, as well maids as married ladies. He declared ’twould come to his having to look for mere children, just come from the cradle so to speak, so as not to find so wide a space of open sea as he had done with the rest, but get better pleasure by swimming in a narrow strait. An if he had addressed these words to a certain great and honourable dame I do know, she would have made him the same answer she did to another gentleman of the great world, to whom, on his making a like complaint, she did retort thus: “I wot not which hath better cause of complaint, you men of our width and over amplitude, or we women of your tenuity and over smallness, or rather your tiny, tiny littleness; truly we have as much to lament in you as ever you in us.” The lady was right enough in what she said. Similarly another great lady, one day at Court looking curiously at the great bronze Hercules in the fountain at Fontainebleau, as she was a-walking with an honourable gentleman which did escort her, his hand beneath her arm, did complain that the said Hercules, albeit excellently well wrought and figured otherwise, was not so well proportioned in all his members as should be, forasmuch as his middle parts were far too small and out of proper measure, in no wise corresponding to his huge colossus of a body. The gentleman replied he did not agree with what she said, for ’twas to be supposed that in those days ladies were not so wide as at the present. A very great lady and noble Princess[94] learning how that certain folk had given her name to a huge great culverin, did ask the reason why. Whereupon one present answered: “’Tis for this, Madam, because it hath a calibre greater and wider than all the rest.” _Si est-ce pourtant qu’elles y ont trouvé assez de remède, et en trouvent tous les jours assez pour rendre leurs portes plus étroites, carrées et plus malaisées d’entrée; dont aucunes en usent, et d’autres non; mais nonobstant, quand le chemin y est bien battu et frayé souvent par continuelle habitation et fréquentation, ou passages d’enfants, les ouvertures de plusieurs en sont toujours plus grandes et plus larges. Je me suis là un peu perdu et dévoyé; mais puisque ç’a été à propos il n’y a point de mal, et je retourne à mon chemin._