nd if he is not yet possessed of the treasure, he ought to pray without
ceasing that it may be vouchsafed him, for then he is established in
safety, and

May not be deceived as I guess.

From the praise of wives, the merchant, speaking the views of the
knight, proceeds to extol the trustworthy advice of women in general,
and his first instance is Rebecca, who instructed Jacob how to supplant
Esau. The reasoning is purposely rendered inconsistent, and the
assertion that a married man was secured against deception is
immediately followed by an example in which the husband was deluded by
the stratagem of the wife.]

[Footnote 8:

Lo Judith, as the story telle can,
By wise counsel she Goddes people kept
And slew him Holofernes while he slept.
Lo Abigail by good counsel how she
Saved her husband Nabal, when that he
Should have been slain.

The respite that Abigail obtained for Nabal was very short. He died by a
judgment from heaven in about ten days from the time that she went forth
to meet David, and with presents and persuasions diverted him from his
purpose, as he was advancing to take vengeance on her husband. The
striking narrative in the apocryphal book of Judith is undoubtedly
fabulous. The pretended Judith was a widow. The deceptions by which she
is said to have got the captain of the Assyrian army into her power are
abhorrent to our purer morality, but they would have been considered
legitimate stratagems of war in the East.]

[Footnote 9: Dryden, Juvenal, vi. 640.

The rest are summoned on a point so nice.

[Footnote 10: In Chaucer the knight does not ask his friends to choose
for him because many heads are wiser than one, but because with several
people on the look out there is more likelihood that a suitable wife
will be found quickly than if he was unassisted in the search.]

[Footnote 11: In the original,

But one thing warn I you, my friendes dear,
I will none old wife have in no manere.

Marriages seem to have taken place in those days at a very early age.
The wife of Bath married at twelve, and the knight's notion of an "old
wife" it appears, five lines further on, was a woman of twenty. He
insists that he will marry nobody that is above sixteen:

She shall not passe sixteene year certain.
Old fish, and young flesh, that would I have full fain.
Bet is, quoth he, a pike than a pikerel,
And bet than old beef is the tender veal.

"Bet"