ons of
cold, not to consider them as beneath their maid-servants: they said
also that several of their sex, from their natural timidity, are not in
a state of exercising the above art; but I added, from their natural
modesty. From the above considerations it may now be known what is meant
by infernal marriages in the world between persons who interiorly are
the most inveterate enemies, and exteriorly are like the most attached
friends.

* * * * *

293. To the above I will add TWO MEMORABLE RELATIONS. FIRST. Some time
ago as I was looking through a window to the east, I saw seven women
sitting in a garden of roses at a certain fountain, and drinking the
water. I strained my eye-sight greatly to see what they were doing, and
this effort of mine affected them; wherefore one of them beckoned me,
and I immediately quitted the house and came to them. When I joined
them, I courteously inquired whence they were. They said, "We are wives,
and are here conversing respecting the delights of conjugial love, and
from much consideration we conclude, that they are also the delights of
wisdom." This answer so delighted my mind (_animum_), that I seemed to
be in the spirit, and thence in perception more interior and more
enlightened than on any former occasion; wherefore I said to them, "Give
me leave to propose a few questions respecting those satisfactions." On
their consenting, I asked, "How do you wives know that the delights of
conjugial love are the same as the delights of wisdom?" They replied,
"We know it from the correspondence of our husbands' wisdom with our own
delights of conjugial love; for the delights of this love with ourselves
are exalted and diminished and altogether qualified, according to the
wisdom of our husbands." On hearing this, I said, "I know that you are
affected by the agreeable conversation of your husbands and their
cheerfulness of mind, and that you derive thence a bosom delight; but I
am surprised to hear you say, that their wisdom produces this effect;
but tell me what is wisdom, and what wisdom (produces this effect)?" To
this the wives indignantly replied, "Do you suppose that we do not know
what wisdom is, and what wisdom (produces that effect), when yet we are
continually reflecting upon it as in our husbands, and learn it daily
from their mouths? For we wives think of the state of our husbands from
morning to evening; there is scarcely an hour in the day, in which o