]
Wherefore, as a certain Greek author says: a woman's head is like a
quicksand; for pray, mark well this argument, which is most weighty: As
the head is the chief of the body, and as the body without a chief is
worse than a beast, unless the chief has a good understanding with the
body, and unless everything be as well regulated as if it were measured
with a pair of compasses, we see certain confusions arrive; the animal
part then endeavours to get the better of the rational, and, we see one
pull to the right, another to the left; one wants something soft,
another something hard; in short, everything goes topsy turvy. This is
to show that here below, as it has been explained to me, a woman's head
is like a weather-cock on the top of a house, which veers about at the
slightest breeze; that is why cousin Aristotle often compares her to the
sea; hence people say that nothing in the world is so stable as the
waves.
[Footnote: Though "stable" is here used, it is only employed to show the
confusion of Gros-Rene's ideas, who, of course, wishes to say
"unstable."]
Now, by comparison--for comparison makes us comprehend an argument
distinctly,--and we learned men love a comparison better than a
similitude,--by comparison, then, if you please, master, as we see that
the sea, when a storm rises, begins to rage, the wind roars and
destroys, billows dash against billows with a great hullabaloo, and the
ship, in spite of the mariner, goes sometimes down to the cellar and
sometimes up into the garret; so, when a woman gets whims and crotchets
into her head, we see a tempest in the form of a violent storm, which
will break out by certain .
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