“How did you guess so well, my Lady, that I was speaking of friars, when I did not name them? But in truth what I do is not called murmuring, for I speak very openly and plainly; nor am I speaking of the good, but of the bad and guilty, of whom moreover I do not tell the thousandth part of what I know.” “Do not speak of friars now,” replied my lady Emilia; “because for my part I esteem it grievous sin to listen to you, and so I shall go away in order not to listen to you.” 21.—“I am content,” said the Magnifico Giuliano, “to speak no more of this; but returning to the praises of women, I say that my lord Gaspar shall not find me an admirable man, but I will find you a wife or daughter or sister of equal and sometimes greater merit. Moreover, many women have been the cause of countless benefits to their men-folk, and sometimes have corrected many a one of his errours. Wherefore, women being (as we have shown) naturally capable of the same virtues as men, and the effects thereof being often seen, I do not perceive why,—in giving them what it is possible for them to have, what they more than once have had and still have,—I should be regarded as relating miracles, whereof my lord Gaspar has accused me; seeing that there have always been on earth, and now still are, women as like the Court Lady I have fashioned, as men like the man these gentlemen have fashioned.” Then my lord Gaspar said: “Those arguments that have experience against them do not seem to me good; and certainly if I were to ask you who these great women were that have been as worthy of praise as the great men whose wives or sisters or daughters they were, or that have been the cause of any benefit, and who those were that have corrected the errours of their men-folk,—I think you would be embarrassed.” 22.—“Verily,” replied the Magnifico Giuliano, “no other thing could make me embarrassed save their multitude; and had I time enough, I should tell you here the story of Octavia,[345] wife of Mark Antony and sister of Augustus; that of Porcia,[346] Cato’s daughter and wife of Brutus; that of Caia Cæcilia,[347] wife of Tarquinius Priscus; that of Cornelia,[348] Scipio’s daughter; and of countless others who are very celebrated: and not only of our own, but of barbarian nations; as that of Alexandra,[349] wife of Alexander king of the Jews, who,—after her husband’s death, when she saw the people kindled with fury and already up in arms to slay the two children that he had left her, in revenge for the cruel and grievous bondage in which the father had always kept them,—so acted that she soon appeased their just wrath, and by her prudence straightway won over for her children those minds which the father, by countless injuries during many years, had made very hostile to his offspring.” “At least tell us,” replied my lady Emilia, “how she did it.”