Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/159

 poor man sat still, as one sleeping; he wiped his head and durst say no more than 'ere thunder stinteth cometh a rain.' The tale of Pasiphaë, that was queen of Crete, savoured to him pleasantly for her wickedness ; fie! speak no more of her horrible lust and love; it is a grisly thing. Of Clytemnestra, that, for her wantonness, made her husband to die, he read it with full good devotion. He told me eke for what cause Amphiaraus died at Thebes; he had a legend of his wife, Eriphile, that for a clasp of gold privily revealed unto the Greeks the place where her husband hid him, for which he had a sorrowful fate at Thebes. Of Lyma he told me, and of Lucy, that both caused their husbands' deaths, the one for love, the other for hatred. Lyma, late on an even, poisoned her husband, because she had grown to be his foe. Lucy wantonly so loved her husband that, to make him alway have her in mind, she gave him such a manner of love-drink that he died, ere it was morrow; and thus husbands ever have woe.

"Then he told me how one Latumius complained to Arrius, his fellow, that a certain tree grew in his garden on which, he said, his three wives hanged themselves for anger of heart. 'O sweet brother,' quoth this Arrius, 'give me a graft of that blessed tree and it shall be planted in my garden!' He read me of wives of later date, how some slew their husbands in their beds. Some have driven nails in their husbands' brains while they slept, and thus they have killed them; some have given poison to them in their drink. He spake more harm than heart can conceive. And therewith he knew of more proverbs than there grow blades of grass in this world. 'Better is it,' quoth he, 'that thy habitation be with a lion or a foul dragon than with a woman that useth to chide. Better