ife; therefore is He happy through all eternity."

"But," said the maid-servant, "cuckolds are made in the image of God
before they are horned."

Then the three pilgrims began to curse women, saying that they were
the cause of all the evils in the world.

"Their heads are as empty as helmets," said the Burgundian.

"Their hearts are as straight as bill-hooks," said the Parisian.

"Why are there so many men pilgrims and so few women pilgrims?" said
the German baron.

"Their cursed member never sins," replied the Parisian; "it knows
neither father nor mother, the commandments of God, nor those of the
Church, neither laws divine or human: their member knows no doctrine,
understands no heresies, and cannot be blamed; it is innocent of all,
and always on the laugh; its understanding is nil; and for this reason
do I hold it in utter detestation."

"I also," said the Burgundian, "and I begin to understand the
different reading by a learned man of the verses of the Bible, in
which the account of the creation is given. In this Commentary, which
in my country we call a Noel, lies the reason of imperfection of this
feature of women, of which, different to that of other females, no man
can slake the thirst, such diabolical heat existing there. In this
Noel is stated that the Lord God, having turned his head to look at a
donkey, who had brayed for the first time in his Paradise, while he
was manufacturing Eve, the devil seized this moment to put his finger
into this divine creature, and made a warm wound, which the Lord took
care to close with a stitch, from which comes the maid. By means of
this frenum, the woman should remain closed, and children be made in
the same manner in which God made the angels, by a pleasure far above
carnal pleasure as the heaven is above the earth. Observing this
closing, the devil, wild at being done, pinched the Sieur Adam, who
was asleep, by the skin, and stretched a portion of it out in
imitation of his diabolical tail; but as the father of man was on his
back this appendage came out in front. Thus these two productions of
the devil had the desire to reunite themselves, following the law of
similarities which God had laid down for the conduct of the world.
From this came the first sin and the sorrows of the human race,
because God, noticing the devil's work, determined to see what would
come of it."

The servant declared that they were quite correct in the statements,
for that woman was a b