lish and womanish complaints and proceed from lack of
advisement. This is not the first time that fortune hath made use of
various means and strange instruments to bring matters to foreordained
issues. What have I to care if it be a cordwainer rather than a
philosopher, that hath, according to his judgment, despatched an
affair of mine, and whether in secret or openly, provided the issue be
good? If the cordwainer be indiscreet, all I have to do is to look
well that he have no more to do with my affairs and thank him for that
which is done. If Gisippus hath married Sophronia well, it is a
superfluous folly to go complaining of the manner and of him. If you
have no confidence in his judgment, look he have no more of your
daughters to marry and thank him for this one.

Nevertheless I would have you to know that I sought not, either by art
or by fraud, to impose any stain upon the honour and illustriousness
of your blood in the person of Sophronia, and that, albeit I took her
secretly to wife, I came not as a ravisher to rob her of her
maidenhead nor sought, after the manner of an enemy, whilst shunning
your alliance, to have her otherwise than honourably; but, being
ardently enkindled by her lovesome beauty and by her worth and knowing
that, had I sought her with that ordinance which you will maybe say I
should have used, I should not (she being much beloved of you) have
had her, for fear lest I should carry her off to Rome, I used the
occult means that may now be discovered to you and caused Gisippus, in
my person, consent unto that which he himself was not disposed to do.
Moreover, ardently as I loved her, I sought her embraces not as a
lover, but as a husband, nor, as she herself can truly testify, did I
draw near to her till I had first both with the due words and with the
ring espoused her, asking her if she would have me for husband, to
which she answered ay. If it appear to her that she hath been
deceived, it is not I who am to blame therefor, but she, who asked me
not who I was. This, then, is the great misdeed, the grievous crime,
the sore default committed by Gisippus as a friend and by myself as a
lover, to wit, that Sophronia hath secretly become the wife of Titus
Quintius, and this it is for which you defame and menace and plot
against him. What more could you do, had he bestowed her upon a churl,
a losel or a slave? What chains, what prison, what gibbets had
sufficed thereunto?

But let that be for the pre