Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

“ Ah! gallant folk of Sienna, may ye live for ever! Would to heaven ye were still ours in all else, as it may well be, ye are yet in heart and soul! For the overrule of a King of France is far gentler than that of a Duke of Florence; and besides this, the kinship of blood can never go for naught. If only we were as near neighbours as we be actually remote from each other, we might very like be found at one in will and deed. ”

“ For in those old days, even as to-day, some of our greatest ladies were slaves to love and much subject to detraction; for indeed folk so adroit as they have grown since, and ’twas only the cleverest that had the good fortune to impose on their husbands and pass as good women by virtue of their hypocrisies and little wiles. The lady then, seeing the lad to be well-favoured, goes on to tell him how she would give him a mistress that would love him well, provided he was a true lover to her, making him promise under pain of instant shame and disgrace, that above all he should be sure and secret. ”

“ For such a prize she had no wish to be a King’s wife, but had rather be a simple Captain’s such as he, which not alone in war by his valiant arm, but in peace likewise with the honour of an unbroken spirit, had been strong to vanquish Kings, great Princes and mighty Captains, to triumph over the same and master them.” High courage and virtue and truth did all mark this lady’s words; for truly to reign by ill faith is a very evil and sorry thing, but to give the law to Kings and kingdoms by honesty and worth a right noble one. ”

“ Yet have I been taught of some of the most clear sighted and most eloquent persons I know, that beautiful young widows which do remain in that condition in the very flower of their sweet age and heyday of their life, do exercise an over great cruelty upon themselves and nature, so to conspire against their own selves, and refuse to taste again the gentle joys of a second marriage. ”

“ Quite opposite is the maid, he saith, and all such doubts and hesitations be foreign to her. Her one desire is to have a lover true, and after once choosing him well, to give all her soul to him and please him in all things, deeming it the best honour she can do him to be true and steadfast in her love. So being only too ardent for the things which have never yet been seen, heard or proven of her, she doth long far more than other women which have had experience of life, to see, hear and prove all such matters. Thus the keen desire she hath to see new things doth strongly dominate her heart ”

“ I could wish from my heart that not a few evil tongues in this our land of France could be chastened and refrain them from their scandal-making, and comport them more after the Spanish fashion. For no man there durst, on peril of his life, to make so much as the smallest reflection on the honour of ladies of rank and reputation. Nay! so scrupulously are they respected that on meeting them in any place whatsoever, an if the faintest cry is raised of lugar a las damas, every man doth lout low and pay them all honour and reverence. ”

“ Yet when a woman doth get all ever she can out of a man, she doth knock him clean over, just doing him to death. ’Tis an old saying: A woman should not take of a lover all she would have, but must spare him what she can; not so with an husband, him she should drain to the very bones. And this is why, as the Spanish saw hath it, que el primero pensamiento de la muger, luego que es casada, es de embiudarse.—“A married woman’s first thought is to contrive to make herself a widow.” ”

“ And truly ’twas a good time and a lucky; for if they did accomplish some gallant deed for love of their ladies, these same fair ladies, in no wise ingrate, knew well how to reward them, whenas they hied them back to meet them, or mayhap would give them tryst there, in the forests and woodlands, or near some fair fountain or amid the green meadows. And is not this the guerdon of his doughtiness a soldier most doth crave of his lady love?
Well! it yet remains to ask, why women do so love these men of valiance? ”

“ You are still plain Comte d’Angoulême, and never King of France, as you do hope to be. The King her husband is old, and cannot now make her children. You must needs meddle and go with her, you with your young hot blood, and she the same, and by the Risen Lord! the end will be she will just catch on like a limed bird, conceive you a child, and there you are! After that you’ve only to say, ‘Goodbye! my chance of the fair Kingdom of France!’ Wherefore I say, reflect. ”

“ Here we see how ’tis not only of to-day that fair ladies do love pages, above all when they be gay and speckled like partridges. And verily, what creatures women be!—that be ready enough to have lovers galore, but husbands not! This they do for the love of freedom, which is indeed a noble thing. For they think, when once they be out of their husband’s rule, they are in Paradise, having their fine dower and spending it themselves, managing all the household, and handling the coin. ”

“ I have known many such which had rather hear a fiddle play, or dance or leap or run, than hearken to any love discourse whatsoever; while other some do so adore the chase they should better be called servants of Diana than of Venus. I did once know a brave and valiant Lord, since dead, which fell so deep in love with a maid, and a great lady to boot, that he was like to die; “for whenas I am fain,” he used to say, “to declare my passion, she doth answer me never a word but about her dogs and her hunting. ”

“ In the beginning Brantôme may have taken an entirely neutral attitude towards the material at hand, but took no greater personal interest in them than he would, say, in memoirs. But when we can tell a story well, then we also take pleasure in our ability. We permeate the story with our own enjoyment, and in a flash it turns out to be pleasure in the thing itself. The light of our soul glows upon them and then the things themselves look like gold. Brantôme rarely breaks through his reserve. ”

“ Of these was that right fair, and good and gentle Roman lady of yore, Martia, second daughter of Cato of Utica, sister to Portia, who after losing her husband incessantly bewailing the said loss, being asked when would be the last day of her mourning, did make answer ’twould be only when the last day of her life should come. Moreover being both very beautiful and very rich, she was more than once asked when she would marry again, to which she replied: “’Twill be when I can find a man that will marry me rather for my merits than for my wealth.” ”

“ Just so we do read how a little before the great battle was fought in Africa betwixt Scipio and Hannibal, which did put a final end to the War of Rome and Carthage, how previous to its beginning, they did come together in a short truce of some two hours’ duration. Whenas they were approached near each other, there the twain of them stood some little while wrapped in contemplation one of the other, each thinking of the valour of the other, so renowned by their exploits and so well represented in their gallant visages, their persons, and their fine, warlike ways and bearing. ”

“ The said lady, with others I have heard of, held the opinion that to lie with one’s Sovereign was no disgrace; those be harlots indeed which do abandon their bodies to petty folk, but not where great Kings and gallant gentlemen be in question. Like that Queen of the Amazons I have named above, which came a journey of three hundred leagues for to be gotten with child by Alexander the Great, to have good issue therefrom. Yet there be those who say one man is as good as another for this! ”

“ As for the estate of widows in many cases, there be many which do love just as soberly as these Vestals, and myself have known several such; but others again would far fainer take their joy in secret with men, and in the fullness of complete liberty, rather than subject to them in the bonds of marriage. For this reason, when we do see women long preserve their widowhood, ’tis best not over much to praise them as we might be inclined to do, till we do know their mode of life, and then only, according to what we have learned thereof, either to extol them most highly or scorn them. ”

“ Other ladies I have known which have quitted cowardly fellows, albeit these were very rich, to love and wed gentlemen that did possess naught at all but sword and cloak, so to say. But then they were valorous and great-hearted, and had hopes, by dint of their valiance and bravery, to attain to rank and high estate. Though truly ’tis not the bravest that do most oft win these prizes; but they do rather suffer sore wrong, while many a time we behold the cowardly and fainthearted succeed instead. Yet be this as it may, such fortune doth never become these so well as it doth the men of valour. ”

“ I have seen an aged widow, and a great lady too, which did put under her tooth in less than four years a third husband and a young nobleman she had taken for lover; and did send the pair of them under the sod, not by violence or poison, but by mere enfeeblement and distillation of their substance. Yet to look at this lady, none had ever supposed her capable of aught of the sort; for indeed, before folk she did rather play the prude and poor-spirited hypocrite, actually refusing to change her shift in presence of her women for fear of their seeing her naked. ”

“ I have read in a little Spanish work how Vittoria Colonna, daughter of the great Fabrice Colonna, and wife to the great and famous Marquis de Pescaïre, the nonpareil of his time, after losing her husband,—and God alone knoweth how good an one he was,—did fall into such despair and grief ’twas impossible to give or afford her any consolation whatever. When any did offer any form of comfort, old or new, she would answer them: “For what would you give me consolation?—for my husband that is dead? Nay! you deceive yourselves; he is not dead. ”

“ Learn then of me to die nobly, and not survive your misfortunes and disgrace.” ’Tis a grand thing thus to see a woman teaching us how to live,—and how to die. Yet would he neither obey nor believe her; but at the end of seven or eight months, quick forgetting the memory of this gallant lady, he did re-wed with the sister of Madame de Monceaux, [53] no doubt a fair and honourable damosel,—manifesting to all and sundry how that to keep alive was his one thing needful, be it on what terms it may. ”

“ Well! his King would have it so, and did find pleasure therein; and pleasure one’s Sovereign, a man is dispensed of all scruple, whether in making love or other matters, provided always they be not dishonourable. Accordingly he did make no ado about going to the wars, and hunting and dancing, taking part in mascarades, and the like sports and pastimes. Moreover he was a man of like flesh and blood with other folk, and did possess many great merits and perfections of his own, enough surely to outweigh and cloak this small fault,—if fault it is to be called, to love fair ladies! ”

“ Natheless was she by no means so strict with herself, nor so stern in her moderation, but that she dressed both prettily and richly, only all in black and white, displaying more worldliness therein than did exactly accord with strict widow’s weeds, and in especial ever making a point of showing her beautiful bosom.
Myself did hear the Queen, mother of King Henri III., on occasion of the coronation and marriage of that monarch, say the same: how that widows in days gone by had not the same carefulness as to their attire, modest bearing and strict life, as nowadays. ”

“ I could name an host of ladies which have in suchlike ways done great and good service to their husbands, and how being high of heart and ambition they have pushed on and encouraged their mates to court fortune, and to win goods and grandeur and much wealth. And truly ’tis the most noble and most honourable fashion of getting of such things, thus at the sword’s point. ”

“ I knew another very great lady, which died but a short while agone, having been married to a simple gentleman for more than twenty years, without its being known at all, except by mere gossip and hearsay. ”

“ I have heard how one day a lady, one of her most privy friends, was presuming enough to chide her and urge, by way of jest and half-serious flaunt, that, seeing she could never have children by the King, for many reasons then commonly alleged, she would do well to borrow secret aid of some third person, for to have offspring, to the end she might not be left without authority, supposing her husband did chance to die, but might some day very like be Queen Mother of a King of France, and hold the same rank and high estate as the Queen mother-in-law. ”

“ They would have a far more unruffled mind and not so many suspicions a-buzzing in their heads, nor would there be so many whores on show nor cuckolds before the world. But ’tis not really desirable in any shape or form, for the world would be clean depopulated, and folk would live therein like blocks of stone, without pleasure or satisfaction. So many persons I wot of, of either sex, would say; and indeed Nature would be left imperfect, instead of very perfect as she is. Following her kindly lead as our best captain, we need never fear to lose the right path. ”