In the final stanzas of this poem, which will not bear a more complete reproduction owing to a maudlin sentimentality existing in modern times, we find that the Prophet Job is not regarded as strictly virtuous, for we read: “Prince, sachez que Job fut vertueux, Mais si futil rongneux et grateleux, Nous lui prions qu’il nous garde et console, Pour corriger mondains luxurieux, S’est engendree ceste grosse verole.” Notwithstanding the undoubted proof of the antiquity of venereal diseases, Astruc, as we all know, defends the American origin of the malady, and endeavors to support his views on the hypothesis emitted by Ulrich de Hutten in 1519, _i.e._, at the siege of Naples, at the end of 1494, a Spanish army commanded by Gonsalva of Cordova came to the rescue of the besieged. Their soldiers communicated to the girls of the town and the courtesans of the neighborhood the _maladie Americaine_ (American disease), which was contracted in turn, after the capture of Naples, by the army of King Charles, and afterwards spread throughout France. But history informs us that the King of France did not return to Paris with his troops from the Italian campaign until the month of March, 1496. Now it was on the 6th of March, in this same year, that Parliament issued a proclamation regulating the pox, in which the first section reads: “To-day, the 6th of March, whereas in the City of Paris a disease of a certain contagious character, known as _verole_ (pox), prevails, the which has made much progress in the Realm the past two years, as well at Paris as in other places, and there is reason to fear, this being Springtime, that it may increase, it is deemed expedient to take cognizance of the same.” Other testimony is gathered from the narrative of the voyages of Christopher Columbus by his contemporary Petrus Martyr, of Anghierra, historian attached to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. According to the notes given him by the great navigator on his return to Spain, authentic records kept from day to day,[47] the Spanish and Italian sailors of Columbus found “people who lived in the Age of Gold; with no ditches, no fences, no books, no laws. The men were entirely naked, the women only protected by a belly-band of light material; notwithstanding all this, their morals were pure.” Besides, Petrus Martyr (_La Syphilis au XV. Siecle_) proves there was syphilis in Spain in 1487.