“Shame, shame on such husbands!  To the devil with them!”

By good fortune the Grey Friar De Valles was passing that way and heard the noise and the reason of it.  He resolved to touch upon it the following day in his sermon, and did so.  Turning his discourse to the subject of marriage and the affection which ought to subsist in it, he greatly extolled that condition, at the same time censuring those that offended against it, and comparing wedded to parental love.  Among other things, he said that a husband who beat his wife was in more danger, and would have a heavier punishment, than if he had beaten his father or his mother.

“For,” said he, “if you beat your father or your mother you will be sent for penance to Rome; but if you beat your wife, she and all the women of the neighbourhood will send you to the devil, that is, to hell.  Now look you what a difference there is between these two penances.  From Rome a man commonly returns again, but from hell, oh! from that place, there is no return:  nulla est redemptio” (3)

After preaching this sermon, he was informed that the women were making a triumph of it, (4) and that their husbands could no longer control them.  He therefore resolved to set the husbands right just as he had previously assisted their wives.

     3 This was the Pope’s expression apropos of Messer Biagio,
     whom Michael Angelo had introduced into his “Last
     Judgment.”—­M.

4 The French expression is faisaient leur Achilles, the nearest equivalent to which in English would probably be “Hectoring” It is curious that the French should have taken the name of Achilles and we that of Hector to express the same idea of arrogance and bluster.—­Ed.

With this intent, in one of his sermons he compared women and devil together, saying that these were the greatest enemies that man had, that they tempted him without ceasing, and that he could not rid himself of them, especially of women.

“For,” said he, “as far as devils are concerned, if you show them the cross they flee away, whereas women, on the contrary, are tamed by it, and are made to run hither and thither and cause their husbands countless torments.  But, good people, know you what you must do?  When you find your wives afflicting you thus continually, as is their wont, take off the handle of the cross and with it drive them away.  You will not have made this experiment briskly three or four times before you will find yourselves the better for it, and see that, even as the devil is driven off by the virtue of the cross, so can you drive away and silence your wives by virtue of the handle, provided only that it be not attached to the cross aforesaid.”

“You have here some of the sermons by this reverend De Valles, of whose life I will with good reason relate nothing more.  However, I will tell you that, whatever face he put upon the matter—­and I knew him—­he was much more inclined to the side of the women than to that of the men.”