And so it is that, at the epoch of women’s triumph, we find in France two distinct species of husbands. The first, without shutting their eyes to the importance of money, refused to make it the principal question in marriage. Undoubtedly it was unfortunate if the wife came quite empty-handed, and in such a case a girl ran some risk of the “pain” of remaining an old maid or falling into an unhappy plight. The most insignificant workgirl set her heart on getting a little dower together, even by methods not altogether innocent,[108] and we know that the purses of princesses dribbled out a beneficent response to this desire. But many marrying men were quite content to be fobbed off with some sort of equivalent. Thus Louis XII. created François de Melun Count of Epinay to induce him to marry Louise de Foix; and Louis de la Trémoille gave twelve hundred livres to his servant, Robert Suriete, to compensate him for the portionless condition of a pretty girl, Marie de Briethe. The other kind of husband, which was destined more and more to outnumber the first, saw in money, on the contrary, the real, substantial element of wedlock. Anyone who thought that a woman would appreciate a sacrifice made to marry her struck them as egregiously simple. The richer women are, the better they are, as Montaigne says: there is no reason why a man should sacrifice positive “commodities” to uncertain (and not particularly useful) quantities such as birth, beauty, virtue, wit. The ball once set rolling spun along merrily. Especially in Italy, the exploitation of marriage attained imposing proportions. Indignant fathers of families protested; the Venetian senate, composed mainly of fathers, passed various decrees more and more restrictive, contemptuous and scathing, but all in vain. The whole class of idle young men of fashion, and it was a numerous one, avowedly regarded marriage as a unique means of enriching themselves and assuring an idle life, a charmingly easy means, too, not above the level of the meanest intelligence. Guez de Balsac likened it to a fat prebend which does not require the holder to become actually a canon, but which does unhappily necessitate occasional residence. This custom does not perhaps indicate very warm feelings on the part of the young men, but it cannot be denied that it satisfied the secret wishes of the women and gave a sanction to the evolution of their ideas.