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desire to wed, took a wife: and such being his motive, Fortune provided
him with just such a spouse as he merited. For the wife of his choice was
a stout, red-haired young woman, and so hot-blooded that two husbands
would have been more to her mind than one, whereas one fell to her lot
that gave her only a subordinate place in his regard. Which she
perceiving, while she knew herself to be fair and lusty, and felt herself
to be gamesome and fit, waxed very wroth, and now and again had high
words with her husband, and led but a sorry life with him at most times.
Then, seeing that thereby she was more like to fret herself than to
dispose her husband to conduct less base, she said to herself:--This poor
creature deserts me to go walk in pattens in the dry; wherefore it shall
go hard but I will bring another aboard the ship for the wet weather. I
married him, and brought him a great and goodly dowry, knowing that he
was a man, and supposing him to have the desires which men have and ought
to have; and had I not deemed him to be a man, I should never have
married him. He knew me to be a woman: why then took he me to wife, if
women were not to his mind? 'Tis not to be endured. Had I not been minded
to live in the world, I had become a nun; and being minded there to live,
as I am, if I am to wait until I have pleasure or solace of him, I shall
wait perchance until I am old; and then, too late, I shall bethink me to
my sorrow that I have wasted my youth; and as to the way in which I
should seek its proper solace I need no better teacher and guide than
him, who finds his delight where I should find mine, and finds it to his
own condemnation, whereas in me 'twere commendable. 'Tis but the laws
that I shall set at nought, whereas he sets both them and Nature herself
at nought.
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:
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