Extrait 5: Le discours du Mari Jaloux

No king or prince had yet committed any crime whereby he was robbing and seizing from another. All were accustomed to being equal, and no one wanted any possessions of his own. They knew this well, which is neither lying nor foolish, that love and lordship never kept each other company nor dwelt together. The one that dominates drives them apart.

As soon as I go to my work, you go off dancing and hopping and lead such ribaldry that it seems very great, and you sing like a siren. May God bring you misfortune!
 
And when I go off to Rome or Friesland with our merchandise, then immediately you become very coquettish - for word of your conduct goes around everywhere, and I know through one who tells me of it - and when anyone speaks about the reason that you conduct yourself so demurely in all the places you go, you reply, 'Alas! Alas! It is out of love for my husband.' For me, sorrowful wretch that I am? Who knows whether I forge or weave, whether I am dead or alive? I should have a sheep's bladder shoved in my face. Certainly I am not worth one button if I don't scold you. You have created a great reputation for me when you boast of such a thing. Everyone knows very well that you lie. For me, sorrowful wretch! For me! I formed evil gauntlets with my own hands and deceived myself cruelly when I obtained your faith on the day of our marriage.

For me you lead this riot! For me you lead this life of luxury! Who do you think you go around fooling? I never have the possibility of seeing these quaint little games, when these libertines, who go around spying out whores, greedy for pleasure and hot with desire, gaze and look upon you from top to bottom when they accompany you through the streets. For whom are you peeling these chestnuts? Who can trick me more than you? You make a rain-cape out of me! When now I accompany you by your side, I see that, in this coat and that wimple, you seem simpler than a turtledove or dove. It doesn't matter¹³ to you if it is short or long when I am all alone by your side entertaining you. No matter how good-tempered I am, I would not hold back, if someone gave me four bezants or if I did not refuse them out of shame, beating you in order to subdue your great pride. Understand that it does not please me that you adorn yourself with coquetry for a carol or dance, except in my presence only.  

Furthermore, I can hide it no longer: do you have any lands to divide up between you and this young squire,

Robichonnet with the green hat, who rushes to you when you call? You cannot leave him alone; you are always joking together. I don't know what you want of each other nor why you always talk to one another. Your silly conduct makes me mad with anger. By our God who doesn't lie, if you ever speak to him, your face will grow pale, in fact more livid than mulberry; for, God help me, before I take this life of dissipation away from you, I will give you blows to that face that is so pleasing to the libertines, and you will then stay meek and silent. You will never go out without me, but will serve me in the house, held in good iron rings.
 
 
The devils make you very intimate with those ribalds, full of flatteries, toward whom you ought to be distant. Didn't I take you to serve me? Do you think that you deserve my love in order to consort with these dirty ribalds because they have such gay hearts and find you so gay in turn? You are a wicked ribald,

and I can have no confidence in you. Demons made me marry.

   Ah! If I had believed Theophrastus, I would never have married a wife. He does not consider many a man wise who takes a wife in marriage, whether she is beautiful or ugly, poor or rich, for he says, and affirms it as true in his noble book, Aureolus (a good one to study in school), that married life is very disagreeable, full of toil and trouble, of quarrels and fights that result from the pride of foolish women, full, too, of their opposition and the reproaches that they make and utter with their mouths, full of demands and complaints that they find on many occasions. One has great trouble keeping them in line and restraining their foolish desires. And he who wants to take a poor wife must undertake to feed and clothe her and put shoes on her feet. And if he thinks that he can improve his situation by taking a very rich wife, he will have great torment enduring her, that is how proud and haughty, and overweening and arrogant he will find her. If she is beautiful, everybody will run after her, pursue her.

They will beat each other, struggle, fight and battle and will exert themselves to serve her. All will surround her, beg her, linger, covet her, and carry on until in the end they take advantage of her, for a tower besieged on all sides can hardly escape being taken.
  If she is ugly, she wants to please everybody. And how could one possibly guard a creature that either everyone besieges or who wants all those who see her? If he takes up war against the whole world, he cannot live on earth. No one would keep them from being taken, as long as they were well-solicited. Even Penelope could be taken by a man who knew well how to do it; and there was no better woman in Greece. In faith, he would do the same with Lucretia, even though she killed herself because King Tarquin's son took her by force. According to Titus Livius, no husband or father or relative could prevent her, in spite of all the trouble that they undertook, from killing herself in front of them. They urged her strongly to let go of her sorrow; they gave her many beautiful reasons.

And her husband particularly comforted her with compassion and pardoned her with a good heart for the entire deed, and lectured her and exerted himself to find exemplary arguments to prove to her that her body had not sinned when her heart did not wish the sin, for the body cannot be a sinner if the heart does not consent to the act. But she, in her sorrow, held a knife hidden in her breast, so that no one might see it when she took it to strike herself. And she answered them without shame: 'Fair lords, that one may pardon me for the filthy sin that weighs on me so heavily, regardless of this pardon, I do not accept penance for it.' Then, full of great anguish, she struck her heart and fell to the ground dead, in front of them. But first she begged them to labor to avenge her death. She wanted to establish this example in order to assure women that any man who took them by force would have to die. As a result, the king and his son were sent into exile and died there.

Because of that disarray, the Romans never wanted to crown a king in Rome. And if one knows how to beseech women, there is no Lucretia, no Penelope in Greece, nor any worthy woman on earth. If a man knew how to take her, no woman ever defended herself. The stories of the pagans tell us so, and no one ever found an exception. Many women even give themselves away when they lack suitors.
  And those who marry have a very perilous custom, so ill-arranged that it appears to me as a great marvel. I don't know where this folly comes from, except from raging lunacy. I see that a man who buys a horse is never so foolish as to put up any money if he does not see the horse unclothed, no matter how well it may be covered. He looks the horse over everywhere and tries it out. But he takes a wife without trying her out, and she is never unclothed, not on account of gain or loss, solace or discomfort, but for no other reason than that she may not be displeasing before she is married. And when she sees things accomplished,

she shows her malice for the first time; then appears every vice that she has; and then, when it will do him no good to repent, she makes the fool aware of her ways. I know quite certainly that, no matter how prudently his wife acts, there is no man, unless he is a fool, who does not repent when he feels himself married. By Saint Denis! A worthy woman, as Valerius bears witness, is a rarer species than the phoenix and can love no man without piercing his heart with great fears and cares and other bitter misfortunes. Rarer than the phoenix?      By my head, a more honest comparison would say fewer than white crows, although their bodies may be beautiful. Nevertheless, whatever I say, and in order that those who are alive may not say that I attack all women with too great impunity, a worthy woman, if one wants to recognize her, either in the world or in the cloister, and if he wants to put in some toil in seeking her, is a very rare bird on earth, so easily recognized that it is like the black swan. Even Juvenal confirms this when he reiterates it in a positive statement:

'If you find a chaste wife, go kneel down in the temple, bow down to worship Jupiter, and put forth your effort to sacrifice a gilded cow to Juno, the honored lady, for nothing more wonderful ever happened to any creature.'
 
And if a man wants to love evil women, of whom, according to Valerius, who is not ashamed to tell the truth, there are swarms, here and across the sea, greater than those of the bees that gather in their hives, what end does he expect to come to? He brings harm to himself by clinging to such a branch. He who clings to it, I repeat, will lose both soul and body.
   Valerius, who sorrowed because Rufinus, who was his companion, wanted to marry, gave him a stern speech: 'My friend,' he said, 'may the omnipotent God keep you from ever being put into the snare of an all-powerful woman who ruins everything through her cunning.'
 
Juvenal himself writes to Postumus on his marriage: 'Do you want to take a wife, Postumus? Can't you find ropes, cords, or halters for sale? Can't you jump out of one of the high windows that we can see? Or can't you let yourself fall from the bridge?

What delirium leads you to this torment and pain?'
   King Phoroneus himself, who, as we learned, gave the Greek people their laws, spoke from his deathbed and said to his brother Leonce: 'Brother, I reveal to you that I would have died happy if I had never married a wife.' And Leonce straightaway asked him the cause for that statement. 'All husbands,' he said, 'try it and find it by experiment; and when you have taken a wife, you will know it well in every detail.'
 
 
    Pierre Abelard, in turn, admits that Sister Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete and his former love, did not want to agree for anything that he take her as his wife. Instead, the young lady of good understanding, well educated, loving and well loved in return, brought up arguments to convince him not to marry. And she proved to him with texts and reasons that the conditions of marriage are very hard, no matter how wise the wife may be.

For she had seen, studied, and known the books, and she knew the feminine ways, for she had them all in herself. She asked him to love her but not to claim any right of her except those of grace and freedom, without lordship or mastery, so that he might study, entirely his own man, quite free, without tying himself down, and that she, who was not devoid of knowledge, might also devote herself to study. She told him again that, in any case, their joys were more pleasing and their comfort grew greater when they saw each other more rarely. But he, as he has written for us, loved her so much that he married her in spite of her admonition which led to unhappiness. After she had taken the habit of a nun at Argenteuil - by agreement of both of them together, as it seems to me - Pierre's testicles were removed, in his bed in Paris, at night; on this account he endured great suffering and torment. After this misfortune, he was a monk of Saint Denis in France, then abbot of another abbey; then, it says in his Life,

he founded a widely known abbey that he named the Abbey of the Paraclete, where Heloise, who was a professed nun before, was abbess. She herself, without shame, in a letter to her friend, whom she loved so much that she called him father and lord, tells a wondrous thing that many consider foolish. It is written in the letters, if you search the chapters well, that she sent to him by express, even after she was abbess: 'If the emperor of Rome, to whom all men should be subject, deigned to wish to take me as his wife and make me mistress of the world, I still would rather,' she said, 'and I call God to witness, be called your whore than be crowned empress.'
 
But, by my soul, I do not believe that any such woman ever existed again. And I think that her learning put her in such a position that she knew better how to overcome and subdue her nature, with its feminine ways. If Pierre had believed her, he would never have married her.

Marriage is an evil bond, so help me Saint Julian, who harbors wandering pilgrims, and Saint Leonard, who unshackles prisoners who are truly repentant, when he sees them lamenting. It would have been better for me to go hang, the day I had to take a wife, when I became acquainted with so coquette a woman. With such a coquette I am dead. But for Saint Mary's son, what is that coquetry worth to me, that costly, expensive dress that makes you turn your nose up, that is so long and trails behind you, that irks and vexes me so much, that makes you act so overbearing that I become mad with rage? What do I have to gain from it? No matter how much it profits others, it does me only harm; for when I want to entertain myself with you, I find it so encumbering, so annoying and troublesome that I cannot achieve my aim. I cannot hold you there properly for all the many turns and parries that you make with your arms, legs, and hips, twisting so much. I don't know how this happens,

but I see very well that my lovemaking and my comforts do not please you. Even at night, when I lie down, before I welcome you in my bed, as any worthy man does his wife, you have to undress yourself. On your head, your body, or your hips you have only a cape of white cloth, with lace ribbons of blue or green perhaps, covered up underneath the cape. The dresses and the fur linings are then put on the pole to hang all night in the air. What can all that be worth to me then, except to sell or pawn? You will see me burn up and die with evil rage if I do not sell and pledge everything; for, since they give me such trouble by day and no diversion at night, what other profit can I expect of them except by selling or pawning them? And if you were to admit the truth, you are worth no more because of them, neither in intelligence, nor in loyalty, nor even, by God, in beauty.
 
 
  And if any man, to confound me, wanted to oppose me by replying that the qualities of good things are passed on to many different people

and that beautiful apparel creates beauty in ladies and girls, then, no matter who said so, I would reply that he lied. For the beauties of fair things, violets or roses, silk cloths or fleurs de lys, as I find it written in a book, are in themselves and not in ladies. For all women should know that no woman will ever, as long as she may live, have anything except her natural beauty. And I say the same about goodness as I have told you about beauty. Thus, to begin my speech, I say that if one wanted to cover manure with silken cloths or little flowers, well-arranged and beautifully colored, it would certainly still be manure, which customarily stinks as it did before.
 
Someone might want to say, 'If this manure is ugly within, it appears more lovely without; and in just the same way ladies adorn themselves in order to appear more beautiful or to hide their ugliness.' If someone were to say thus, I do not know, by my faith, how to reply, except to say that such deception comes from the foolish vision

of eyes that see them in all their fine apparel. As a result, their hearts are led astray because of the pleasing impression of their fantasy, and they do not know how to recognize neither lie nor truth, or how, for lack of good observation, to explicate the sophism.
  But if they had the eyes of a lynx, they would never seem beautiful to them, not for any sable mantles, surcoats, or skirts, any head ornaments, kerchiefs, undergarments, or pelisses, for any jewels or objects of value, for any covert, smirking coquetries, if one considered them well, for any gleaming exteriors, which make them look artificial, and never for any chaplets of fresh flowers. However well Nature had formed Alcibiades, whose body was always beautiful in color and molding, anyone who could see within him would want to consider him very ugly. So Boethius tells us, a man wise and full of worth, and he draws upon the testimony of Aristotle, who observes

that the lynx has a gaze so strong, piercing, and clear that he sees all that one shows him, quite open both without and within. Thus I say that in no epoch were Beauty and Chastity ever at peace. There was always such great strife that I have never heard it said or recounted in fable or song that anything could reconcile them. So mortal is the war between them that the one will never let the other hold a full foot of ground so that she might gain superiority. But things are so badly divided, since, with what Chastity received as her share, she knows so little of combat and parry when she attacks or defends herself that she has to surrender her arms. She does not have the power to defend herself against Beauty, who is very proud. Even Ugliness, Chastity's chambermaid, who owes her honor and service, does not love or value her enough not to chase her from her mansion: she runs after her, hanging from her neck the mace that is so huge and weighs so much that it vexes her exceedingly as long as her mistress remains alive for the length of a single hour.

Chastity is very badly off since she is attacked from two sides without any help from anywhere. She has to flee the field, for she sees that she is alone in the combat. Even if she had sworn it by her throat, she would have her fill of struggle, and when everyone does battle against her, so that she cannot win, she would not dare to resist.  

Now cursed be Ugliness when she thus runs after Chastity, whom she should defend and protect. If she could even hide her between her skin and her shirt, she should put her there. Beauty, also, is certainly very much to blame. She should love Chastity and, if it pleased her, strive for peace between them. She should at least do all she could to put herself in Chastity's good graces, since, if she were worthy, courteous, and wise, she should indeed do homage to her, not bring shame and disgrace; for even the letter bears witness, in the sixth book of Virgil, by the authority of the Sibyl, that no man who lives a chaste life can come to damnation.

Therefore I swear by God, the celestial king, that a woman who wants to be beautiful, or who exerts herself to appear beautiful, looks at herself and takes great trouble to adorn herself and look gracious, that such a woman wants to wage war on Chastity, who certainly has many enemies. In cloisters and abbeys they are all sworn against her. They will never be walled in enough not to hate Chastity so strongly that they all aspire to shame her. They all do homage to Venus, with no consideration for worth or harm; they primp and paint in order to fool those who look at them, and they go searching along through the streets in order to see, to be seen, and to arouse desire in people, so that they will want to lie with them.  

Therefore, they wear their finery to carols and churches alike, for not one of them would ever do so if she did not think that she would be seen, and that she would thus more quickly appeal to those whom she could deceive.   But certainly, if the truth be told, women give great shame to God. Misguided fools, they do not consider themselves rewarded

with the beauty that God gives them.  
Each one has on her head a crown of flowers, of gold, or of silk. She preens herself and primps as she goes through the town showing herself off, and thus the unhappy wretch abases herself in a very evil way when, to increase or perfect her beauty, she wants to attract attention to her head with an object lower and more base than she herself. Thus she goes around despising God because she considers him inadequate, and in her foolish heart she thinks to herself that God did her a great outrage in that, when he proportioned the beauty in her, he acquitted himself too easily. Therefore she searches for beauty in creations that God made with a much worse appearance, things like metals or flowers or other strange things.

As for men, it is the same, without fail. If, to be more beautiful, we make chaplets and adornments for the beauty that God has put in us, we misbehave greatly toward him when we do not consider ourselves rewarded by the beauty that he has given us above all creatures that are born. But I have no interest in such deceptions. I want only enough clothing

to protect myself from cold and heat. This homespun of mine, lined with lamb, protects my body and head against wind, rain, and storm - may God protect me - as well as would fine sky-blue cloth lined with squirrel. It seems to me that I loose my money when I buy you a dress of blue, of camel skin, of brown or scarlet material and line it with squirrel or costly gray fur. To do so makes you run wild, simpering and posturing as you go through dust and mud, while you value neither God nor me. Even at night when you lie completely naked beside me in my bed, you can't be held, for when I want to embrace you to kiss you and comfort you, and when I am thoroughly warmed up, you sulk like a devil and do not want to turn your face toward me for anything that I may do. You pretend to be so sick, you sigh and complain so much and put up so much resistance that I become so fearful that I don't dare assuage you again, when I wake up after I have slept, so great is my fear of failing.

It strikes me as a very great wonder how those ribalds attain anything when, by day, they hold you with your clothes on, if you twist about in the same way when you play with them, and if you give them as much trouble as you do to me, both day and night. But I believe that you have no desire, that instead you go along singing and dancing through the gardens and meadows with these unlawful rogues. They drag this married woman through the green grass with the dew on it, and there they go along despising me and saying to each other, 'It's in spite of that dirty, jealous villain!' May the flesh and bones that have brought me such shame be given over to wolves and mad dogs now! It is through you, ignominious woman, and your foolish behavior, that I am given over to shame, you ribald, filthy, vile, stinking slut. May your body never see the end of this year when you give in to such disgrace! Through you and your lechery I am placed in the confraternity of Saint Hernoul, the patron of cuckolds,

from whom no man with a wife, to my knowledge, can be safe, no matter how much he may guard and spy on her, even with a thousand eyes. All women get themselves pushed over. There is no guard who could prevent it. If it happens that she fails in the act, the will is always there, and if she can, she will jump to the act, for desire will always win. But Juvenal gives one great comfort for this situation when he says, of the need that is called amorous caressing, that this is the least of the sins by which the heart of a woman is stained, for their nature commands each of them to give her attention to doing worse. Do we not see how the mothers-in-law cook up poisons for their sons-in-law, how they work charms and sorceries and so many other diabolical things that they can't be counted, no matter how stout his powers of thought? All you women are, will be, and have been whores, in fact or in desire, for, whoever could eliminate the deed, no man can constrain desire. All women have the advantage of being mistresses of their desires. For no amount of beating or upbraiding can change your hearts,

but the man who could change them would have lordship over your bodies.  
Now let us leave what cannot be. But fair sweet God, fair celestial king, what can I do with the rascals who thus shame me and oppose me? If I happen to threaten them, how seriously will they take my threat? If I go to fighting with them, they can kill me or beat me straightway, so cruel and unprincipled, so eager to do all sorts of wickedness, so young and handsome, wild and headstrong are they. They will think me not worth a straw, for youth so enflames them, filling their hearts with fire and flame and inciting them, by necessity, to foolish, light, and giddy deeds, that each one thinks himself Roland, indeed Hercules or Samson. These latter two, as men think - it is written and I recall it - had strong bodily resemblances. According to the author Solinus, this Hercules was seven feet tall, and no man, as he said, could ever attain a greater height. Hercules had many struggles: he conquered twelve horrible monsters,

and when he had overcome the twelfth he could never finish with the thirteenth, his sweetheart Deïaneira, who, with her poisonous shirt, lacerated his flesh, all enflamed by the poison. His heart had already been made mad with love for Iole. Thus Hercules, who had so many virtues, was subued by woman.  
 
 
In the same way Samson, who, if he had had his hair, would have feared ten men no more than ten apples, was deceived by Dalila. I commit nothing but folly in saying these things, for I know very well that when you leave me you will recount, one after the other, all the things that I say. You will go crying to those wretches, and, if you ever can go to them, you can have my head laid open, my thighs smashed, or my shoulders gashed. But if I can hear word of it before it happens and if my arms are not held or my pestle removed, I will break your ribs. Neither friends, neighbors, nor relatives will ever be protection for you,

nor your lechers themselves. Alas! Why did we ever see each other?  
Alas! in what an hour was I born, when you consider me so vile that these wretched stinking curs, who go around flattering and caressing you, are thus your lords and masters! I should have been their lord, since I support you, buy your shoes and clothes, and feed you, while you make me share with these dirty scoundrels, these rascals who bring you nothing but shame. They have robbed you of your reputation, of which you take no care when you hold them in your arms. In front of you they say that they love you, but behind your back they call you a whore. When they are together again, they tell what seems worse to them, how each of them serves you. I know their tales very well, and, without fail, it is true that when you lie in their power they indeed know how to put you to it, for there is no resistance whatever in you when you are entered into the crowd where each one stabs you repeatedly and tramples on you.  
 
 
My faith, I am overcome with envy of their comfortable life.

But know, and remember well, that all this is not on account of your body or the pleasure they get from you; instead, they do so only to have the delight of the jewels, the golden buckles and buttons, the robes and pelisses that I, like a foolish simpleton, allow you. For when you go off to the carols or to your silly gatherings, and I remain like a drunken fool, you carry a hundred pounds worth of gold and silver on your head; and you order people to dress you in camelot, squirrel, and gray fur so that I quite pine away with anger and anxiety, so chagrined and tormented am I.

These golden buckles with fine stones, at your sides and on your bosom, these precious materials, and these belts whose mountings are so expensive, as much for gold as for seed pearls - what are such baubles worth to me? Besides, you wear your shoes so tight that you often raise your dress to show your feet to those knaves. So may Saint Thibaut comfort me, I shall sell everything within three days, and I shall consider you dirt beneath my feet. By God's body, no matter who moans and complains, you shall have nothing from me but a coat and surcoat and a hempen kerchief, not fine but coarse and badly woven, torn and mended. And by my head, you will be well belted, but I will tell you with what kind of belt: one of plain leather without a buckle. You will also have big shoes made out of my old boots, wide enough to stuff with large rags. You will take off those baubles that give you the occasion for committing fornication, and you will no longer go out to display yourself in order to get yourself thrown to the ground underneath those rascals.

But now tell me without making up any lies. Where, for the sake of love, did you get that other rich new dress in which you fixed yourself up here the other day when you went to the carols, for I know very well that I am right to think that I never gave it to you. You swore to me by Saint Denis, Saint Philibert, and Saint Peter that it came to you through your mother, who sent you the cloth for it because, as you gave me to understand, her love for me is so great that she wants to spend her money in order to make me keep mine. May she be spitted alive, that dirty old whore, the priest's concubine, that mackerel, that pimping whore, and may you, for your merits, fry along with her, if the case is not exactly as you say!  
 
 
I would certainly ask her, but I would exert myself in vain; the whole thing would not be worth a ball to me: like mother, like daughter.  
I know that you have talked together, and it is obvious that you both have hearts touched by the same wand. I know with which foot you limp, and that dirty painted old whore agrees with your attitude;

she used to act in the same way. She has followed so many roads that she has been bitten by many curs. But now, I know, her looks are so bad that she can make nothing by herself, and so now she sells you. Three or four times a week she comes in here and leads you out on the pretext of new pilgrimages according to her old customs - for I know the whole plan - and then she doesn't stop parading you, as one does with a horse for sale, while she grabs and teaches you to grab.  
Do you think that I don't know you well? Somebody hold me so that I don't break your bones with this pestle or this spit until you are like a paté of baby chicks.'

Instead he hits her, beats her, thumps her, and knocks her about while she gives out howls and cries and sends her voice flying on the winds past windows and roofs. She reproaches him in every way she knows how, just as it comes into her mouth, in front of the neighbors who come there. The neighbors think them both crazy; with great difficulty they take her away from him while he is out of breath. When the lady feels this torment and takes account of this riot and this diverting viol on which our jongleur plays to her, do you think that she will ever love him more? She would want him to be at Meaux, indeed in Romagna! I will say more; I don't think that she might ever want to love him. She might pretend, but if he could fly up to the clouds or raise his view so high that from there, without falling, he could see all the deeds of men, and if he reflected upon all at leisure, he still would have to choose into which peril he fell, and he has not seen all the frauds that a woman knows how to meditate in order to protect and defend herself.

Afterward, if he sleeps in her company, he puts his life in very great peril. Indeed, sleeping and waking, he must fear most strongly that, in order to avenge herself, she may have him poisoned or hacked into pieces, or make him languish in a life of desperate ruses. Or he must fear that, if she cannot play any other way, she may take it into her head to flee. A woman values neither honor nor shame when anything rises up in her head; this is the truth without doubt. A woman has no reason whatever.  
 
Valerius even claims that, toward whatever she hates and whatever she loves, a woman is bold, cunning, and studious of bringing injury to others. My friend, consider this mad jealous boor - may his flesh be fed to the wolves - so filled with his jealousy, as I have described him for you here in this story. He makes himself lord over his wife, who, in turn, should not be his lady but his equal and his companion, as the law joins them together; and, for his part, he should be her companion without making himself her lord or master.

Do you think that, when he arranges such torments for her and does not consider her his equal but rather makes her live in such distress, he will not be displeasing to her and that the love between them will not fail? Yes indeed, without fail, whatever she says, he will not be loved by his wife if he wants to be called 'lord,' for love must die when lovers want lordship. Love cannot endure or live if it is not free and active in the heart. For this same reason we see that those who at first are accustomed to love each other out of love may, after they want to marry each other, find that love can hardly ever hold them together; for the man loved out of love would proclaim himself his sweetheart's sergeant, and she grew used to being his mistress. Now he calls himself lord and master over her whom he called his lady when she was loved out of love.  
'Loved?'  
'Truly.'  
'In what way?'  
'In such a way that if, without entreaty, she were to command him, 'Jump, lover,' or 'Give me that thing,' he would immediately give it and jump when she ordered him to. In fact, whatever she might say, he would jump so that she might see him,

for he had placed his whole desire in doing all her pleasure. But then after they have married each other, as I have told you, the wheel is turned, so that he who was in the habit of serving her now commands her to serve him, just as if she were his slave, and he holds her with a short rein and orders her to give an account of her doings. And he used to call her his lady! He who has not learned this truth is dying. Then she considers herself ill-used when she sees herself thus attacked by the best, most trusted man that she found in the world, the man who thus wants to oppose her.  
 
When she sees her master on her neck, the man against whom she never took any precaution, she does not know whom to trust. The verse is changed for the worse. Now that he has changed the dice on her, the throws are so different, so cruel and strange, that she cannot and dare not play. How can she be happy? If she does not obey, he gets angry and berates her, and she grumbles. There they are, fallen into anger and straightway through anger become enemies.

It was for this reason, my friend, that the ancients maintained their friendship for each other without bonds of servitude, peaceably, and without boorishness, and they did not give away their freedom for the gold of Araby or Friesland, for he who wanted to take all gold for it could not very well sell it. At that time there was no pilgrimage: no man went out from his own shores to search for a foreign country. Jason had not yet passed over the sea, and he was the first to do so when he organized the ships for the journey to seek the Golden Fleece. When Neptune saw the ships sailing along, he thought for certain that he was captured in war. Triton, too, had to puff his cheeks with rage; and Doris and all her daughters, because of the marvellous tricks, thought that they were all betrayed, so greatly were they dumbfounded by the ships that flew over the sea just as the sailors wished them to.   But the first of which I tell you did not know the value of navigation. In their own country they found everything that seemed good to seek. All were equally rich, and they loved each other lawfully.

Thus they lived peacefully together, for these simple people of good life loved each other naturally. At that time there was no simony in love; one did not demand something from another. Then Fraud came, with his lance at rest, and Sin and Misfortune, who take no heed of Sufficiency, and along with them came Pride, equally disdainful in her grand array, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, and all the other vices. Then they all made Poverty spring up from hell, where she had been so long that no man knew anything of her, for she had never been on earth.