to their
humors, although they cherished in their hearts a deadly hatred against
them; and further, that their wives still behaved courteously to them
both in word and deed, and complaisantly attended to some of their
requests. Now as the men themselves greatly wondered, whence such an
antipathy could arise in their internals, and such an apparent sympathy
in their externals, they examined into the causes thereof from some
women who were acquainted with the above secret art. From this source of
information they learned, that women (_mulieres_) are skilled in a
knowledge which they conceal deeply in their own minds, whereby, if they
be so disposed, they can subject the men to the yoke of their authority;
and that this is effected in the case of ignorant wives, sometimes by
alternate quarrel and kindness, sometimes by harsh and unpleasant looks,
and sometimes by other means; but in the case of polite wives, by urgent
and persevering petitions, and by obstinate resistance to their husbands
in case they suffer hardships from them, insisting on their right of
equality by law, in consequence of which they are firm and resolute in
their purpose; yea, insisting that if they should be turned out of the
house, they would return at their pleasure, and would be urgent as
before; for they know that the men by their nature cannot resist the
positive tempers of their wives but that after compliance they submit
themselves to their disposal; and that in this case the wives make a
show of all kinds of civility and tenderness to their husbands subjected
to their sway. The genuine cause of the dominion which the wives obtain
by this cunning is, that the man acts from the understanding and the
woman from the will, and that the will can persist, but not so the
understanding. I have been told, that the worst of this sort of women,
who are altogether a prey to the desire of dominion, can remain firm in
their positive humors even to the last struggle for life. I have also
heard the excuses pleaded by such women (_mulieres_) for entering upon
the exercise of this art; in which they urged that they would not have
done so unless they had foreseen supreme contempt and future rejection,
and consequent ruin on their part, if they should be subdued by their
husbands: and that thus they had taken up these their arms from
necessity. To this excuse they add this admonition for the men; to leave
their wives their own rights, and while they are in alternati