May not be deceived as I guess.
From the praise of wives, the merchant, speaking the views of the knight, proceeds to extol the trustworthy advice of women in general, and his first instance is Rebecca, who instructed Jacob how to supplant Esau. The reasoning is purposely rendered inconsistent, and the assertion that a married man was secured against deception is immediately followed by an example in which the husband was deluded by the stratagem of the wife.
Lo Judith, as the story telle can,
By wise counsel she Goddes people kept
And slew him Holofernes while he slept.
Lo Abigail by good counsel how she
Saved her husband Nabal, when that he
Should have been slain.
The respite that Abigail obtained for Nabal was very short. He died by a judgment from heaven in about ten days from the time that she went forth to meet David, and with presents and persuasions diverted him from his purpose, as he was advancing to take vengeance on her husband. The striking narrative in the apocryphal book of Judith is undoubtedly fabulous. The pretended Judith was a widow. The deceptions by which she is said to have got the captain of the Assyrian army into her power are abhorrent to our purer morality, but they would have been considered legitimate stratagems of war in the East.
[9] Dryden, Juvenal, vi. 640.
The rest are summoned on a point so nice.
[10] In Chaucer the knight does not ask his friends to choose for him because many heads are wiser than one, but because with several people on the look out there is more likelihood that a suitable wife will be found quickly than if he was unassisted in the search.
[11] In the original,
But one thing warn I you, my friendes dear,
I will none old wife have in no manere.