However let us say no more of these dignified folk, in view of the deep respect we do owe their order and holy rank. We must now something put through their paces those old widows we wot of that have not six teeth left in their chops, and yet do marry again. ’Tis no long while agone that a lady of Guienne, already widowed of three husbands, did marry for a fourth a gentleman of some position in that province, she being then eighty. I know not why she did it, seeing she was very rich and had crowns in plenty,—indeed ’twas for this the gentleman did run after her,—unless it were that she was fain not to surrender just yet, but to win more amorous laurels to add to her old ones, as Mademoiselle Sevin, the Queen of Navarre’s jester, was used to say. Another great lady I knew, which did remarry at the age of seventy-six, wedding a gentleman of a lower rank than her previous husband, and did live to an hundred. Yet did she continue beautiful to the last, having been one of the finest women of her time, and one that had gotten every sort of delight out of her young body, both as wife and widow, so ’twas said. Truly a formidable pair of women, and of a right hot complexion! And indeed I have heard experienced bakers declare how that an old oven is far easier to heat than a new one, and when once heated, doth better keep its heat and make better bread. I wot not what savoury appetites they be which do stir husbands and lovers to prefer these hot-loaf dainties; but I have seen many gallant and brave gentlemen no less eager in love, nay! more eager, for old women than for young. They tell me ’twas to get worldly profit of them; but some I have seen also, which did love such with most ardent passion, without winning aught from their purse at all, except that of their person. So have we all seen erstwhile a very great and sovran Prince,[125] which did so ardently love a great dame, a widow and advanced in years, that he did desert his wife and all other women, no matter how young and lovely, for to sleep with her only. Yet herein was he well advised, seeing she was one of the fairest and most delightsome women could ever be seen, and for sure her winter was better worth than the springtide, summer and autumn of the rest. Men which have had dealings with the courtesans of Italy have seen, and do still see, not a few cases where lovers do choose the most famous and long experienced in preference, and those that have most shaken their skirts, hoping with them to find something more alluring in body or in wit. And this is why the beauteous Cleopatra, being summoned of Mark Antony to come see him, was moved with no apprehension, being well assured that, inasmuch as she had known how to captivate Julius Cæsar and Gnæus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, when she was yet but a slip of a girl, and knew not thoroughly the ways and wiles of her trade, she could manage better still her new lover, a very fleshly and