[Footnote: Compare in Shakespeare's _Part First of King Henry IV_.
v. I, Falstaff's speech about honour.]
The grave is too melancholy an abode, and too unwholesome for people who
are afraid of the colic; as for me, I find, all things considered, that
it is, after all, better to be a cuckold than to be dead. What harm is
there in it? Does it make a man's legs crooked? does it spoil his shape?
The plague take him who first invented being grieved about such a
delusion, linking the honour of the wisest man to anything a fickle
woman may do. Since every person is rightly held responsible for his own
crimes, how can our honour, in this case, be considered criminal? We are
blamed for the actions of other people. If our wives have an intrigue
with any man, without our knowledge, all the mischief must fall upon our
backs; they commit the crime and we are reckoned guilty. It is a
villainous abuse, and indeed Government should remedy such injustice.
Have we not enough of other accidents that happen to us whether we like
them or not? Do not quarrels, lawsuits, hunger, thirst, and sickness
sufficiently disturb the even tenour of our lives? and yet we must
stupidly get it into our heads to grieve about something which has no
foundation.
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