Consummation usually took place at the age of twelve. That was a favourite age with the husbands; though, according to the best judges, fifteen was the age when the physical charms were at their best, and the soul was most malleable—a view dating as far back as Hesiod and Aristotle. Tiraqueau,[22] the friend of Rabelais, vaunts his exploit in having wedded a girl of ten. In vain did the French physicians implore the men in mercy to have a little patience, beseech them to wait at least until the fourteenth year: they demurred, for it was humiliating for a father to have a fifteen-year-old daughter on his hands: at sixteen they would have called it a catastrophe. Champier,[23] one of the gravest of writers, proposed that after the age of sixteen young women should be provided with husbands by the State, on the lines of Plato’s system. Some parents betrayed such haste to get their girls off their hands that they anticipated the ceremony, handing them over to their husbands-elect on the strength of a mere promise of fidelity. It happened at Milan, among the Sforza family, that a mother, becoming apprehensive, refused at the last moment to part with her daughter on such terms, and the matter ended where it should properly have begun, in a mutual arrangement, the young lady being formally placed in charge of her husband to save appearances. But difficulties like these were always very dangerous. In this case a dispute arose in regard to the dowry, and blood waxed hot; the bridegroom broke off the match, and took to wife another girl of the same family, a child of ten, whom he led off like a horse-dealer returning with a filly purchased at the fair. Sometimes, in great families, the girls were married in advance by proxy. Certain wives grew to womanhood without even making their husbands’ acquaintance.