ruth, 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."

["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
(Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
--Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]

This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
quite contrary to its cause. This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
mortal hatred: he killed her. In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
and cabals:

"Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"

["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
--AEneid, V. 21.]

and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.

Now, the