“I have done all I could to avoid this mishap, but since you suspect me of being so wicked and the opposite of what I have always proved towards you, I give you my oath and word that I will indeed be such a one as you deem me, and that I will never rest until I have had from your wife that which you believe I seek from her.  So I bid you beware of me henceforward, for, since suspicion has destroyed your friendship for me, resentment will destroy mine for you.”

Although his comrade tried to persuade him of the contrary, he would no longer believe him, but removed his portion of the furniture and goods that had been in common between them.  And so their hearts were as widely sundered as they had before been closely united, and the unmarried gentleman never rested until, as he had promised, he had made his comrade a cuckold. (3)

3 The idea developed in this tale, that of bringing to pass by one’s own actions the thing one fears and seeks to avoid or prevent, has much analogy with that embodied in the “novel of the Curious Impertinent” which Cervantes introduces into Don Quixote (Part I. chaps, xxviii., xxix).  In this tale it will be remembered Anselmo and Lothario are represented as being two such close friends as the gentlemen who figured in Queen Margaret’s tale.  Anselmo marries, however, and seized with an insane desire to test the virtue of his wife, Camilla, by exposing her to temptation, urges Lothario to pay court to her.  Lothario at first resists these solicitations, pointing out the folly of such an enterprise, but his friend entreats him so pressingly that he finally consents, and in the sequel the passion which he at first simulates for Camilla becomes a real one and leads to his seducing her and carrying her away, with the result that both the wretched Anselmo and his wife soon die of grief, whilst Lothario betakes himself to the wars and perishes in battle.—­M. & Ed.

“Thus, ladies, may it fare with those who wrongfully suspect their wives of evil.  Many men make of them what they suspect them to be, for a virtuous woman is more readily overcome by despair than by all the pleasures on earth.  And if any one says that suspicion is love, I give him nay, for although it results from love as do ashes from fire, it kills it nevertheless in the same way.”

“I do not think,” said Hircan, “that anything can be more grievous to either man or woman than to be suspected of that which is contrary to fact.  For my own part, nothing could more readily prompt me to sever fellowship with my friends than such suspicion.”

“Nevertheless,” said Oisille, “woman is without rational excuse who revenges herself for her husband’s suspicion by her own shame.  It is as though a man should thrust his sword through his own body, because unable to slay his foe, or should bite his own fingers because he cannot scratch him.  She would have done better had she spoken to the gentleman no more, and so shown her husband how wrongly he had suspected her; for time would have softened them both.”