So the good lady reasoned, and peradventure more than once; and then, casting about how she might privily compass her end, she made friends with an old beldam, that shewed as a veritable Santa Verdiana, foster-mother of vipers, who was ever to be seen going to pardonings with a parcel of paternosters in her hand, and talked of nothing but the lives of the holy Fathers, and the wounds of St. Francis, and was generally reputed a saint; to whom in due time she opened her whole mind.  “My daughter,” replied the beldam, “God, who knows all things, knows that thou wilt do very rightly indeed:  were it for no other reason, ’twould be meet for thee and every other young woman so to do, that the heyday of youth be not wasted; for there is no grief like that of knowing that it has been wasted.  And what the devil are we women fit for when we are old except to pore over the cinders on the hearth?  The which if any know, and may attest it, ’tis I, who, now that I am old, call to mind the time that I let slip from me, not without most sore and bitter and fruitless regret:  and albeit ’twas not all wasted, for I would not have thee think that I was entirely without sense, yet I did not make the best use of it:  whereof when I bethink me, and that I am now, even as thou seest me, such a hag that never a spark of fire may I hope to get from any, God knows how I rue it.  Now with men ’tis otherwise:  they are born meet for a thousand uses, not for this alone; and the more part of them are of much greater consequence in old age than in youth:  but women are fit for nought but this, and ’tis but for that they bear children that they are cherished.  Whereof, if not otherwise, thou mayst assure thyself, if thou do but consider that we are ever ready for it; which is not the case with men; besides which, one woman will tire out many men without being herself tired out.  Seeing then that ’tis for this we are born, I tell thee again that thou wilt do very rightly to give thy husband thy loaf for his cake, that in thy old age thy soul may have no cause of complaint against thy flesh.  Every one has just as much of this life as he appropriates:  and this is especially true of women, whom therefore it behoves, much more than men, to seize the moment as it flies:  indeed, as thou mayst see for thyself, when we grow old neither husband, nor any other man will spare us a glance; but, on the contrary, they banish us to the kitchen, there to tell stories to the cat, and to count the pots and pans; or, worse, they make rhymes about us:—­’To the damsel dainty bits; to the beldam ague-fits;’ and such-like catches.  But to make no more words about it, I tell thee at once that there is no person in the world to whom thou couldst open thy mind with more advantage than to me; for there is no gentleman so fine but I dare speak my mind to him, nor any so harsh and forbidding but I know well how to soften him and fashion him to my will.  Tell me only what thou wouldst have, and leave the rest to me:  but one word more:  I pray thee to have me in kindly remembrance, for that I am poor; and thou shalt henceforth go shares with me in all my indulgences and every paternoster that I say, that God may make thereof light and tapers for thy dead:”  wherewith she ended.