Now of our widows some be alway glad to try marriage once again and run its risks, like mariners that twice, thrice and four times saved from shipwreck do again and again go back to the sea, and as married women do, which in the pains of motherhood do swear and protest they will never, never go back to it again, and no man shall ever be aught to them, yet no sooner be they sound and clean again, but they take to the same old dance once more. So a Spanish lady, being in her pangs, had a candle lighted in honour of Our Lady of Mont-Sarrat, who much succours women in child-birth. Yet did she fail not to have sore pain and swear right earnestly she would never go back to it any more. She was no sooner delivered but turning to her woman who held the candle still alight, she said, _Serra esto cabillo de candela para otra vez_, “Put away that bit of candle for another time.” Other ladies do prefer not to marry; and of these are always some, and always have been, which coming to be widows in the flower of their age, be content to stay so. Ourselves have seen the Queen Mother, which did become a widow at the age of seven or eight and thirty years, and did ever after keep that state; and fair, pleasant and agreeable as she was, did never so much as think of any man to be her second husband. No doubt it may be said on the other side,—Whom could she have wedded suitable to her lofty estate and comparable with the great King Henri, her late lord and master; beside she would thereby have lost the government of the Kingdom, which was better worth than an hundred husbands, and its enjoyment more desirable and pleasant? Yet is there no advantage Love doth not make women forget; wherefore she is the more to be commended and worthy to be recorded in the temple of fame and immortality. For she did master and command her passions,—not like another Queen, which unable to restrain herself, did wed her own steward of the household, by name the Sieur de Rabodanges.[95*] This the King, her son, did at first beginning find exceeding strange and bitter; but yet, because she was his mother, he did excuse and pardon the said Rabodanges for having married her; and it was arranged that by day, before the world, he should serve her alway as steward, not to deprive her, being the King’s mother, of her proper state and dignity, but by night she should make of him what pleased her, using him either as servant or master at her choice, this being left to their own discretion and good pleasure. We may readily imagine who was master then; for every woman, be she as high-born as she may, coming to this point, is ever subject to the superior male, according to the law of nature and humanity in this matter. I have the tale from the late Grand Cardinal de Lorraine, second of the name and title, which did tell it at Poissy to King Francis II., the time he did institute the eighteen knights of the Order of Saint Michael,—a very great number, and one