sleep for
speaking of it. At table I would not let him eat for speaking of it.
When I was alone with him, I talked of nothing else; and in company I
gave him frequent hints of it. Still all my talk was how vile and bad
it was in him to love any lady better than me."

The lady abbess, having drawn this full confession from the jealous
Adriana, now said, "And therefore comes it that your husband is mad.
The venomous clamour of a jealous woman is a more deadly poison than
a mad dog's tooth. It seems his sleep was hindered by your railing;
no wonder that his head is light; and his meat was sauced with your
upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown
him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your
brawls; being debarred from the enjoyment of society and recreation,
what could ensue but dull melancholy and comfortless despair? The
consequence is then, that your jealous fits have made your husband
mad."

Luciana would have excused her sister, saying, she always reprehended
her husband mildly; and she said to her sister, "Why do you hear
these rebukes without answering them?" But the abbess had made her
so plainly perceive her fault, that she could only answer, "She has
betrayed me to my own reproof."

Adriana, though ashamed of her own conduct, still insisted on having
her husband delivered up to her; but the abbess would suffer no person
to enter her house, nor would she deliver up this unhappy man to the
care of the jealous wife, determining herself to use gentle means for
his recovery, and she retired into her house again, and ordered her
gates to be shut against them.

During the course of this eventful day, in which so many errors had
happened from the likeness the twin brothers bore to each other, old
AEgeon's day of grace was passing away, it being now near sunset: and
at sunset he was doomed to die, if he could not pay the money.

The place of his execution was near this convent, and here he arrived
just as the abbess retired into the convent; the duke attending in
person, that if any offered to pay the money, he might be present to
pardon him.

Adriana stopped this melancholy procession, and cried out to the duke
for justice, telling him that the abbess had refused to deliver up her
lunatic husband to her care. While she was speaking, her real husband
and his servant Dromio, who had got loose, came before the duke to
demand justice, complaining that his wife had confined