In short I should never have done, an if I were for enumerating all such cases. Wherefore I do stop, both for brevity’s sake, and also for fear I be reproached for that I indulge overmuch in digressions. Yet is this one not inopportune I have made, when speaking of Vittoria Colonna which did marry the Abbé. An if she had not married again with him, she had better deserved her name and title of Vittoria, by being victorious over herself. Seeing she could not find a second husband to match the first, she should have refrained her altogether. I have known many ladies which have copied her however. One I knew did marry one of mine uncles, the most brave, valiant and perfect gentleman of his time. After his death, she did marry another as much like him as an ass to a Spanish charger; but ’twas mine uncle was the Spanish steed. Another lady I knew once, which had wedded a Marshal of France,[122*] a handsome, honourable gentleman and a valiant; in second wedlock she did take one in every way his opposite, and one that had been a Churchman too. What was yet more blameworthy in her was this, that on going to Court, where she had not appeared for twenty years, not indeed since her second marriage, she did re-adopt the name and title of her first husband. This is a matter our courts of law and parliament should look into and legislate against; for I have seen an host of others which have done the like, herein unduly scorning their later husbands, and showing them unwilling to bear their name after their death. For having committed the fault, why! they should drink the cup to the dregs and feel themselves bound by what they have done. Another widow I once knew, on her husband’s dying, did make such sore lamentation and so despairing by the space of a whole year, that ’twas hourly expected to see her dead right off. At the end of a year, when she was to leave off her heavy mourning and take to the lighter, she said to one of her women: “Prithee, pull me in that crêpe becomingly; for mayhap I may make another conquest.” But immediately she did interrupt herself: “Nay! what am I talking about? I am dreaming. Better die than have anything more to do with such follies.” Yet after her mourning was complete, she did marry again to a husband very unequal to the first. “But,”—and this is what these women always say,—“he was of as good family as the other.” Yes! I admit it; but then, what of virtue and worth? are not these more worth counting than all else? The best I find in it all is this, that the match once made, their joy therein is far from long; for God doth allow them to be properly ill-treated of their new lords and bullied. Soon you will see them all repentance,—when it is too late.