coals to be brought, he saw and endured his arm to broil and
roast, till the king himself, conceiving horror at the sight, commanded
the pan to be taken away. What would you say of him that would not
vouchsafe to respite his reading in a book whilst he was under incision?
And of the other that persisted to mock and laugh in contempt of the
pains inflicted upon him; so that the provoked cruelty of the
executioners that had him in handling, and all the inventions of tortures
redoubled upon him, one after another, spent in vain, gave him the
bucklers? But he was a philosopher. But what! a gladiator of Caesar's
endured, laughing all the while, his wounds to be searched, lanced, and
laid open:

["What ordinary gladiator ever groaned? Which of them ever changed
countenance? Which of them not only stood or fell indecorously?
Which, when he had fallen and was commanded to receive the stroke of
the sword, contracted his neck."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 17.]

Let us bring in the women too. Who has not heard at Paris of her that
caused her face to be flayed only for the fresher complexion of a new
skin? There are who have drawn good and sound teeth to make their voices
more soft and sweet, or to place the other teeth in better order. How
many examples of the contempt of pain have we in that sex? What can they
not do, what do they fear to do, for never so little hope of an addition
to their beauty?

"Vallere queis cura est albos a stirpe capillos,
Et faciem, dempta pelle, referre novam."

["Who carefully pluck out their grey hairs by the roots, and renew
their faces by peeling off the old skin."--Tibullus, i. 8, 45.]

I have seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to
destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish
body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they
have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and sometimes to
death?

It is an ordinary thing with several nations at this day to wound
themselves in good earnest to gain credit to what they profess; of which
our king, relates notable examples of what he has seen in Poland and done
towards himself.--[Henry III.]--But besides this, which I know to have
been imitated by some in France, when I came from that famous assembly of
the Estates at Blois, I had a little before seen a maid in Picardy, who
to manifest the ardour of her