The bad fellow began to whistle. Hearing his whistling, the good woman
went suddenly into the queen's chamber, and took from a place known to
her therein, a sharp stiletto. Then, when the duke followed her to
ascertain what this flight meant, "When you pass that line," cried
she, pointing to a board, "I will kill myself."

My lord, without being in the least terrified, took a chair, placed it
at the very edge of the plank in question, and commenced a glowing
description of certain things, hoping to influence the mind of this
brave woman, and work her to that point that her brain, her heart, and
everything should be at his mercy. Then he commenced to say to her, in
that delicate manner to which princes are accustomed, that, in the
first place, virtuous women pay dearly for their virtue, since in
order to gain the uncertain blessings of the future, they lose all the
sweetest joys of the present, because husbands were compelled, from
motives of conjugal policy, not show them all the jewels in the shrine
of love, since the said jewels would so affect their hearts, was so
rapturously delicious, so titillatingly voluptuous, that a woman would
no longer consent to dwell in the cold regions of domestic life; and
he declared this marital abomination to be a great felony, because the
least thing a man could do in recognition of the virtuous life of a
good woman and her great merits, was to overwork himself, to exert, to
exterminate himself, to please her in every way, with fondlings and
kissings and wrestlings, and all the delicacies and sweet
confectionery of love; and that, if she would taste a little of the
seraphic joys of these little ways to her unknown, she would believe
all the other things of life as not worth a straw; and that, if such
were her wish, he would forever be as silent as the grave, and last no
scandal would besmear her virtue. And the lewd fellow, perceiving that