GR.-RE. And so will I. Let us both be angry, and put our love on the
list of our old sins; we must teach a lesson to that wayward sex, and
make them feel that we possess some courage. He that will bear their
contempt shall have enough of it. If we had sense enough not to make
ourselves too cheap, women would not talk so big. Oh! how insolent they
are through our weakness! May I be hanged if we should not see them fall
upon our neck more often than we wished, if it was not for those
servilities with which most men, now-a-days, continually spoil them.
ERAS. As for me, nothing vexes me so much as contempt; and to punish
her's by one as great, I am resolved to cherish a new passion.
GR.-RE. So will I, and never trouble my head about women again. I
renounce them all, and believe honestly you could not do better than to
act like me. For, master, people say that woman is an animal hard to be
known, and naturally very prone to evil; and as an animal is always an
animal, and will never be anything but an animal, though it lived for a
hundred thousand years, so, without contradiction, a woman is always a
woman, and will never be anything but a woman as long as the world
endures.
[Footnote: This passage is paraphrased from Erasmus, _Colloquia
familiaria et Encomium Moriae_, in which, after having called a woman
_animal stultum atque ineptum verum ridiculum, et suave_, Folly
adds, _Quemadmodum, juxta Graecorum proverbium, simia semper est
simia, etiamsi purpura vestiatur, ita mulier semper mulier est, hoc est
stulta, quamcunque personam induxerit_.
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