There were a multitude of good, excellent marriages which were only half marriages. Appearances were saved in the eyes of the world, and even in the eyes of the married couple themselves; they both had the good taste to drift along without undue strain, gathering merely the natural fruits of their association. Both enjoyed their liberty: the wife was unmolested and her own mistress; the husband travelled, sailed the seas, or went on embassies, striking up flirtations in his progress from court to court, and doing his household honour by his successes. Castiglione,[41] a perfect type of the man of the world, saw his wife at intervals, and was always on the best of terms with her; evidently it never occurred to him to take her about with him, but he always showed her in the most delicate manner how much he valued her. At Rome he amused himself by putting into verse a letter he was addressing to her. It was at Rome, too, in August 1520, that he learnt of her death in giving birth to a daughter; just before she died the tender-hearted woman mustered strength to smile for the last time, and to dictate one more charming little letter.[42] Montaigne has a good deal of pity for the women who were subjected to these capricious humours: “They are verily in worse condition than maids and widows. We want them at the same time hot and cold.” He does not remark that, for some reason or other—disgust of too pronounced a materialism, longing for peace and quietness, coquetry, scorn of sensuality, or what not—the majority of women only accepted wifehood for the sake of motherhood, and would be more than satisfied if they could be virgin-mothers; some considered themselves almost as idols sacred from human touch. Pope Alexander VI., for all his humour and his nimble wit, was very far from understanding all these refinements, and this singular loathing of the flesh. In 1502 he expressed himself pithily and forcibly, but vainly, about the amusing opposition of the Duchess of Urbino, who, when she was offered urgent and incontestable reasons for the annulment of her marriage,[43] absolutely refused to exchange her husband for a French husband of unimpaired vigour, whilst the duke, the cause of this contention, accepted a cardinal’s hat. Laugh as Alexander might, with all his keen sense of humour, at what he called “fraternal magnanimity,” this simple incident at Urbino contained the germ of an entirely new code. Other ladies carried the sentiment of ‘fraternity’ to preposterous lengths. Paul Jove[44] himself, who belonged body and soul to the philosophic world, gives vent to his feelings when he records the remarkable feat of Julia Gonzaga, Countess of Fondi, who was left a widow after many years of marriage without having ever yielded on the essential point. Marriage so understood becomes a mere matter of policy or business.