"Arma acri facienda viro,"
["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."—AEneid, viii. 441.]
with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave this excess of kindness to the gods:
"Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
—Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
"Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
husband's daily infidelities."—Idem, ibid.]
When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance, 'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
"Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."