Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/380

 THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER advice; but I do say that I think love, as you understand it, is proper only for unmarried women; for when this love cannot end in marriage, the lady must always find in it that remorse and sting which things illicit give her, and run risk of staining that reputation for chastity which is so important to her." Then messer Federico replied, laughing: " This opinion of yours, my lord Magnifico, seems to me very austere, and I think you have learned it from some preacher — one of those who rebuke women for loving laymen, in order to have themselves the better part therein. And methinks you im- pose too hard a rule on married women, for many of them are to be found whose husbands bear them the greatest hatred without cause, and affront them grievously, sometimes by loving other women, sometimes by causing them all the annoyances possible to devise; some against their will are married by their fathers to old men, infirm, loathsome and disgusting, who make them live in continual misery. If such women were allowed to be divorced and separated from those with whom they are ill mated, perhaps it would not be fitting for them to love any but their husbands; but when, either by enmity of the stars or by un- fitness of temperament or by other accident, it happens that the marriage bed, which ought to be a nest of concord and of love, is strewn by the accursed infernal fury w^ith the seed of its venom, which then brings forth anger, suspicion and the stinging thorns of hatred to torment those unhappy souls cruelly bound by an unbreakable chain until death, — why are you unwilling that the woman should be allowed to seek some refuge from the heavy lash, and to bestow on others that which is not only spurned but hated by her husband? I am quite of the opinion that those who have suitable husbands and are loved by them, ought not to do them wrong; but the others wrong themselves by not loving those who love them." "Nay," replied the Magnifico, "they wrong themselves by loving others than their husbands. Still, since not to love is often beyond our power, if this mischance shall happen to the Court Lady (that her husband's hate or another's love brings her to love), I would have her yield her lover nothing but her spirit ; nor ever let her show him any clear sign of love (either 224