I have heard yet another reason alleged by a very clever person, I say not whether maid or wife,—and she had mayhap had experience of the truth thereof,—why some women be so slow to marry. They declare this tardiness cometh _propter mollitiem_, “by reason of luxuriousness.” Now this word _mollities_ doth mean, they be so luxurious, that is to say so much lovers of their own selves and so careful to have tender delight and pleasure by themselves and in themselves, or mayhap with their bosom friends, after the Lesbian fashion, and do find such gratification in female society alone, as that they be convinced and firmly persuaded that with men they would never win such satisfaction. Wherefore they be content to go without these altogether in their joys and toothsome pleasures, without ever a thought of masculine acquaintance or marriage. Maids and virgins would seem in old days at Rome to have been highly honoured and privileged, so much so that the law had no jurisdiction over them to sentence them to death. Hence the story we read of a Roman Senator in the time of the Triumvirate, which was condemned to die among other victims of the Proscription, and not he alone, but all the offspring of his loins. So when a daughter of his house did appear on the scaffold, a very fair and lovely girl, but of unripe years and yet virgin, ’twas needful for the executioner to deflower her himself and take her maidenhead on the scaffold, and only then when she was so polluted, could he ply his knife upon her. The Emperor Tiberius did delight in having fair virgins thus publicly deflowered, and then put to death,—a right villainous piece of cruelty, pardy!