in at the window, called me to them; and when I was come they said,
"Did you ever see anything more beautiful upon the earth?" I replied,
"Never." They then said, "Such scenery is created instantaneously by the
Lord, and represents something new on the earth; for every thing created
by the Lord is representative: but what is this? tell, if you can: we
say it is the delights of conjugial love." On hearing this, I said,
"What! the delights of conjugial love, respecting which you before
conversed with so much wisdom and eloquence! After I had left you, I
related your conversation to some wives in our country, and said, 'I now
know from instruction that you have bosom delights arising from your
conjugial love, which you can communicate to your husbands according to
their wisdom, and that on this account you look at your husbands with
the eyes of your spirit from morning to evening, and study to bend and
draw their minds (_animos_) to become wise, to the end that you may
secure those delights.' I mentioned also that by wisdom you understand
spiritual rational and moral wisdom, and in regard to marriage, the
wisdom to love the wife alone, and to put away all concupiscence for
other women: but to these things the wives of our country answered with
laughter, saying, 'What is all this but mere idle talk? We do not know
what conjugial love is. If our husbands possess any portion of it, still
we do not; whence then come its delights to us? yea, in regard to what
you call ultimate delights, we at times refuse them with violence, for
they are unpleasant to us, almost like violations: and you will see, if
you attend to it, no sign of such love in our faces: wherefore you are
trifling or jesting, if you also assert, with those seven wives, that we
think of our husbands from morning to evening, and continually attend to
their will and pleasure in order to catch from them such delights.' I
have retained thus much of what they said, that I might relate it to
you; since it is repugnant, and also in manifest contradiction, to what
I heard from you near the fountain, and which I so greedily imbibed and
believed." To this the wives sitting in the rose garden replied,
"Friend, you know not the wisdom and prudence of wives; for they totally
hide it from the men, and for no other end than that they may be loved:
for every man who is not spiritually but only naturally rational and
moral, is cold towards his wife; and the cold lies concealed in his