Yet there are some wise men who beg to disagree with this. Take Theophrastus, for example, who wrote The Golden Book on Marriage. Marriage was not golden for him. But I suspect him of lying. ‘Do not take a wife,’ he said, ‘for the sake of household economy. It is a false saving. A good servant will spare you expense, and will also look after you better than any wife. A wife will always demand her half share in everything. If you are sick you will be happier in the hands of your friends, or even of a serving-boy. Your wife, as always, will be thinking of your goods and chattels. I will tell you something else. If you marry, you are sure to be cuckolded. A woman is unfaithful by nature.’
No, no, Theophrastus! May God curse you for these words! You are telling nothing but lies and more lies! Pay no attention to him. Listen to me instead.
A wife is a gift from God. All other gifts are as nothing. Think of them. Lands. Rents. Pastures. Household goods. They are the gifts of Fortune, mutable and transitory. They are shadows on the wall. But be sure of this. A wife is for life. A wife can last a long time – longer, perhaps, than you might like.
That is why I hold marriage to be a great sacrament. He who is wifeless is cursed. He is helpless. He is desolate. I am not talking about monks or friars, of course. Let me tell you this, too. Women are born to be the servants of men. They are born to help us out. When God had made Adam, and saw him lying in the grass alone and naked, He took pity on him. In His goodness He thought to Himself, ‘Let us now make a companion for this poor man who resembles him. That is the thing to do.’ And He wrought Eve. So, you see, I have proved my point. A wife is a husband’s comfort. She is his earthly paradise; she is his honey. She is so virtuous and obedient that the two of them are bound to live in harmony. They are one flesh. So of course they have one heart between them, both in sickness and in health.
A wife! Good God! How can a man suffer when he has a wife beside him? I cannot say. There is no way of describing or picturing the bliss between them. If he is poor, she will help him in his labours; she keeps house for him, and wastes nothing. She approves of everything her husband does. She will never say ‘no’ when he says ‘yes’. ‘Do this,’ he says. ‘Of course, sir,’ she replies. That is the way it is. Oh happy sacrament of matrimony! You are so cordial, so delightful, so well loved and so well respected! Any man worth his salt will go down on his bended knees and thank God for the day he was married. Or else he will pray to God to send him a wife as quickly as possible. ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘Send me a woman to last me all my life. Then I will be content.’ He will not be wrong in that, I can tell you, especially if he heeds his wife’s advice. Then he will be able to hold up his head. Women are so truthful and so wise, as I am sure you all know, that men are duty bound to follow their commandments.
Do you remember how Jacob took the advice of Rebecca? His mother told him to wear the skin of a goat around his shoulders to trick his father and win his blessing. And do you remember the story of Judith, who slew Holofernes and thus saved the people of God? And then there was Abigail, who by her good counsel saved her husband, Nabal, when he was about to be slain by King David. What about Esther? She saved the people of God from a life of lamentation. She persuaded her husband, Ahasuerus, to advance the cause of Mordechai. You can look up the stories in the Bible, if you don’t believe me.
Seneca, that wise man, tells us there is nothing more pleasing than a humble wife. Suffer your wife to speak, as Cato tells us, and fulfil her commands. Of course, if you are lucky, she may even obey you on occasions. That’s only being polite. A wife must be the keeper of your worldly goods. Who is going to look after you when you are sick? Take my advice. Love your wife in the manner that Jesus Christ loves the Holy Church. If you love yourself, you must also love your wife. No man is an enemy of his own flesh, I am sure. He protects it. You must cherish your wife in the same way. Or you will never thrive. Whatever people say and joke – that was no lady, that was my wife – husband and wife are on the highway to happiness. They are bound so closely together that no harm can come to them. The wife, in particular, gets off lightly.
I will now return to my worthy knight named January. He had been considering all the matters I have put before you – the encroaching years, the physical bliss of marriage, the quiet and order of a settled home, the honey pot of a fair wife. Revolving these matters in his mind, he called together a group of his good friends in order to announce his decision. And with grave face he addressed them thus: ‘I am growing old, dear comrades. I am getting closer and closer to the brink of the grave. I must think about the life to come. I have stupidly wasted my strength in pursuit of all sorts of folly. As God is my judge, I am going to change. I have decided to marry as quickly as possible. I need your help in finding a pretty young girl. I need a bride now. I don’t think I can wait much longer. For my part I will look up and down the town. But you all must keep your eyes open, too. You must help me find a suitable wife.
‘There is one thing I must tell you, though. I will not stomach an old bride. She must be below the age of twenty. I enjoy my fish, but not my flesh, mature. I like fresh meat. A pike is better than a pickerel, but a frisky calf is better than an old cow. I don’t want or need a woman of thirty. Women of that age are nothing but bales of straw. They are beanbags. As for those old widows, God forbid I should come near any of them. They are nothing but trouble and strife. They are more wily than any scholar. They have been to the school of life, where they learned all the lessons. No. Give me a young thing. I will be able to mould her in my hands like a piece of warm wax. So there we are, friends. Throw out the old, and bring in the new. If I should by any chance be unlucky in love, and suffer an unhappy marriage, why, I would take up adultery for a living and go to the devil after my death. I would certainly never father any children on an old misery. I would rather be eaten by dogs than allow my inheritance to pass into strange hands. I am not kidding. I know all the reasons for marriage, although I suspect that there are many people who talk about it who haven’t the faintest idea. So I will tell you this. If a man cannot live chastely, then he must marry. If a man wants to have children by lawful procreation, then he should take a wife. A mistress or a lover is not the same thing. That is mere lechery, in the eyes of God, and has nothing to do with the obligations of the marital bed.
‘Husband and wife can also live together in perfect innocence, of course, just like brother and sister. I don’t think that is the way for me. I can say, thank God, that all my limbs are in good working order. I can do the job of a man. I know where my strength lies. I may seem aged but I am like an old tree that still brings forth its leaves. I can feel my buds begin to swell. My blossoms will soon be poking out. I am not dried up or dead as yet. The only hoar frost is sprinkled on my head. In every other place I am as green and fresh as a laurel, year in and year out. Well, enough. Now that you have heard my proposal, let me know what you think.’
The company all had different opinions and different questions. Some of them praised marriage. Others criticized it. They all had stories and examples to confirm their points of view. They argued all of that day, in a good-humoured fashion, but in the end the main argument was between two of his closest friends. One of them was named Placebo, a pleasing sort of fellow, and the other was known as Justinus, or ‘the just one’.