Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/241

 When Madame de Sévigné heard of her husband's infidelities, it was through the interested malice of her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was in love with her. He proposed that she should seek to be revenged: "I will go halves in your revenge; for, after all, your interests are as dear to me as my own." She quietly replied: "I am not so exasperated as you think."

Iachimo said,—

"Revenge it. I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure, And will continue fast to your affection."

Imogen's white-heat of honor shrivels up the wit of the French lady. Her mind can make but one motion, to cry out, "What ho, Pisanio!"

"Away!—I do contemn mine ears, that have So long attended thee."

Thou dost solicit a lady

"That disdains Thee and the devil alike."

Iachimo now pretends that he was only making trial of her by a false report and by a counterfeited overture,—and all for the sake of the love he bore her husband. This is quite enough: her frankness returns as suddenly as it was dismissed. For, as Iachimo well said,—

"The gods made you, Unlike all others, chaffless."

And that is a statement of the limit placed by Nature to her womanly shrewdness of observation.

In the historical dramas, Shakspeare seldom intro