Bab Bab 124 · How Rondibilis declareth cuc

Chapter 3.XXXII.

How Rondibilis declareth cuckoldry to be naturally one of the appendances

of marriage.

There remaineth as yet, quoth Panurge, going on in his discourse, one small

scruple to be cleared. You have seen heretofore, I doubt not, in the Roman

standards, S.P.Q.R., Si, Peu, Que, Rien. Shall not I be a cuckold? By the

haven of safety, cried out Rondibilis, what is this you ask of me? If you

shall be a cuckold? My noble friend, I am married, and you are like to be

so very speedily; therefore be pleased, from my experiment in the matter,

to write in your brain with a steel pen this subsequent ditton, There is no

married man who doth not run the hazard of being made a cuckold. Cuckoldry

naturally attendeth marriage. The shadow doth not more naturally follow

the body, than cuckoldry ensueth after marriage to place fair horns upon

the husbands’ heads.

And when you shall happen to hear any man pronounce these three words, He

is married; if you then say he is, hath been, shall be, or may be a

cuckold, you will not be accounted an unskilful artist in framing of true

consequences. Tripes and bowels of all the devils, cries Panurge, what do

you tell me? My dear friend, answered Rondibilis, as Hippocrates on a time

was in the very nick of setting forwards from Lango to Polystilo to visit

the philosopher Democritus, he wrote a familiar letter to his friend

Dionysius, wherein he desired him that he would, during the interval of his

absence, carry his wife to the house of her father and mother, who were an

honourable couple and of good repute; because I would not have her at my

home, said he, to make abode in solitude. Yet, notwithstanding this her

residence beside her parents, do not fail, quoth he, with a most heedful

care and circumspection to pry into her ways, and to espy what places she

shall go to with her mother, and who those be that shall repair unto her.

Not, quoth he, that I do mistrust her virtue, or that I seem to have any

diffidence of her pudicity and chaste behaviour,--for of that I have

frequently had good and real proofs,--but I must freely tell you, She is a

woman. There lies the suspicion.

My worthy friend, the nature of women is set forth before our eyes and

represented to us by the moon, in divers other things as well as in this,

that they squat, skulk, constrain their own inclinations, and, with all the

cunning they can, dissemble and play the hypocrite in the sight and

presence of their husbands; who come no sooner to be out of the way, but

that forthwith they take their advantage, pass the time merrily, desist

from all labour, frolic it, gad abroad, lay aside their counterfeit garb,

and openly declare and manifest the interior of their dispositions, even as

the moon, when she is in conjunction with the sun, is neither seen in the

heavens nor on the earth, but in her opposition, when remotest from him,

shineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly appeareth in her brightest

splendour whilst it is night. Thus women are but women.

When I say womankind, I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so

changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion

Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which

is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced

formerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential

judgment by the which she had created and formed all other things, when she

built, framed, and made up the woman. And having thought upon it a hundred

and five times, I know not what else to determine therein, save only that

in the devising, hammering, forging, and composing of the woman she hath

had a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal more respectful heed to the

delightful consortship and sociable delectation of the man, than to the

perfection and accomplishment of the individual womanishness or muliebrity.

The divine philosopher Plato was doubtful in what rank of living creatures

to place and collocate them, whether amongst the rational animals, by

elevating them to an upper seat in the specifical classis of humanity, or

with the irrational, by degrading them to a lower bench on the opposite

side, of a brutal kind, and mere bestiality. For nature hath posited in a

privy, secret, and intestine place of their bodies, a sort of member, by

some not impertinently termed an animal, which is not to be found in men.

Therein sometimes are engendered certain humours so saltish, brackish,

clammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that

by their stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch, wriggling

mordicancy, and smarting salsitude (for the said member is altogether

sinewy and of a most quick and lively feeling), their whole body is shaken

and ebrangled, their senses totally ravished and transported, the

operations of their judgment and understanding utterly confounded, and all

disordinate passions and perturbations of the mind thoroughly and

absolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort that if

nature had not been so favourable unto them as to have sprinkled their

forehead with a little tincture of bashfulness and modesty, you should see

them in a so frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and down

with haste and lust, in quest of and to fix some chamber-standard in their

Paphian ground, that never did the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean

Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more

shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because

this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and

most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident. Let it not

here be thought strange that I should call it an animal, seeing therein I

do no otherwise than follow and adhere to the doctrine of the academic and

peripatetic philosophers. For if a proper motion be a certain mark and

infallible token of the life and animation of the mover, as Aristotle

writeth, and that any such thing as moveth of itself ought to be held

animated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason

did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and

observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation,

precipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that

oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and

moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing

syncope, epileptic, apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced

death.

Furthermore, in the said member there is a manifest discerning faculty of

scents and odours very perceptible to women, who feel it fly from what is

rank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and aromatic smells. It is not

unknown to me how Cl. Galen striveth with might and main to prove that

these are not proper and particular notions proceeding intrinsically from

the thing itself, but accidentally and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my

notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of

their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or

perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a

various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the

diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if

you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus’s

balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that

they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like

nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check

and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the

solid truth.

I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this

dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean

and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living

chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range,

and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient,

submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason. Therefore here will I

make an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the

said animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented

or satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the

epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered

motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly

longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging

lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.

For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual

danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not

wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious

animal. Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your

medicinal art for hindering one’s head to be horny-graffed at home whilst

his feet are plodding abroad? Yes, that I have, my gallant friend,

answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I

frequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set

down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a

standing of two thousand years. Hearken and take good heed. You are,

quoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all

my heart. Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and

convenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the

stomach, because of a kind of astringent stypticity which is in that sort

of fruit, and is helpful to the first concoction. But what? I think I

speak Latin before clerks. Stay till I give you somewhat to drink out of

this Nestorian goblet. Will you have another draught of white hippocras?

Be not afraid of the squinzy, no. There is neither squinant, ginger, nor

grains in it; only a little choice cinnamon, and some of the best refined

sugar, with the delicious white wine of the growth of that vine which was

set in the slips of the great sorbapple above the walnut-tree.