Domestic manners thus underwent a profound transformation. In humble homes the wife continued perforce to cook, to make the beds, to wash her husband’s head and feet, with no loss of dignity. But in the great houses, it was no longer common to find hard inelegant matrons who rose with the sun, were continually chevying the children and servants, and knew no pleasure but the joy of piling up well-bleached and well-darned linen on Saturday, the housewife’s field-day. As Fourier has pointedly observed, disdain of such mole-eyed habits is the test of a people’s progress in civilisation. It is much more delightful to float through life with a smile on the lips, and to govern imperceptibly, by means of a languorous Creole grace. Such grace abounded, and many instances of it might be given. Here is a specimen which seems to us characteristic; it is a simple little note from Isabella d’Este[111] to her husband, dictated to a secretary: “My Lord, Prithee mock not at my letter, nor say that all women are poor things and ever smitten with fear, for the malignity of others far exceedeth my fear and your lordship’s mettle. I should have written this letter with my own hand, but ’tis so hot that, if it last, we are like to die. The little knave is very well and sendeth a kiss to your lordship, and as for me, I do ever commend myself to you. Longing to see your lordship, ISABELLA, with my own hand.” Mantua, July 23rd. “With my own hand,” the signature and no more. It is so hot! But does not this very air of fragility convey a charm exactly of the kind to subjugate even a husband? This charm does enfold him—and it keeps husband and wife apart! Seen at a distance these distinguished women, genuinely Stoic at heart under a mask of _abandon_, in reality overawed their lords and masters, and, even in their private intercourse with them, kept themselves shrouded in mystery and the unknown. Vittoria Colonna’s husband, who took little pains to be agreeable at home,[112] became so devoted a lover of his lawful spouse when far away as to compose in her honour a whole volume of charming verses entitled _A Book of Loves_. This book was never published, and has disappeared. Brantôme keenly regrets its disappearance, because, he says, it would have given us an opportunity to see the poetry of conjugal love, and to know if that ought to draw its inspiration from platonic sentiments or not—from celestial love or from love legitimately terrestrial.