d will be talking. I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
for it. Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
but to think on't. And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the
same rate, from the least even to the greatest?

"Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."

["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
you, you rascal."--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]

Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere. But, the very ladies
will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this
virtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage? Each
amongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel,
in compensation, and turn for turn. The frequency of this accident ought
long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.

Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,

"Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"

["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
--Catullus, lxvii.]

for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not
laugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the
quarry? The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret
by the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a
prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it
indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows
and all that a man feels. To give women the same counsel against
jealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up of
suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way
is not to be hoped. They often recover of this infirmity by a form of
health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are
enchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it upon
another, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, when
they shake it off themselves. And yet I know not, to speak truth,
whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the
most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of