Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/151

 ye women shall apparel you, and not in tressed hair and gay jewels, as pearls, nor with gold, nor rich clothes.' In accordance with this text and rubric of thine, I will not perform as much as a fly. Thou saidest I was like a cat; for if a man will singe a cat's skin, then will the cat alway abide in his house; but if the cat's skin be sleek and fair, she will not dwell in house half a day, but ere any daylight be dawned, she will forth to show her skin and go a-caterwauling. This is to say if I be clad fair, sir rogue, I am running out to show my duds.

"Sir old fool, what aileth thee to spy upon me? Though thou pray unto Argus, with his hundred eyes, to be my bodyguard as best he knoweth, in faith, he shall not keep me unless I please; still could I cozen him, on my life. Thou saidest eke that there be three things which trouble all this world, and that no wight may endure the fourth. O sweet sir rogue, Jesu shorten thy days! Yet thou preachest and sayest a hateful wife is reckoned for one of these mischiefs. Be there no other manner of resemblances that ye may use in your parables, unless a poor wife be one of them? Thou likenest woman's love to hell, to barren land, where no water may abide. Thou likenest it also to wild fire; the more it burneth, the more it hath appetite to consume everything that may be burnt. Thou sayest that even as worms ruin a tree, right so a wife destroyeth her husband; this know they that be bound to wives.

"Lordings, right thus stiffly, as ye have heard, I made mine old husbands believe that they had said thus when they were drunk; and all was false, but I took Jankin to witness and also my niece. O lord, the sorrow I made them and the woe, full guiltless, by God's sweet pain! For I could whine and bite as an horse. I could complain though I were in the guilt