him
speak? to hear other gentlemen talk sense, and he able to say nothing?
and so look like a fool, or, which is worse, hear him talk nonsense, and
be laughed at for a fool.

In the next place, there are so many sorts of fools, such an infinite
variety of fools, and so hard it is to know the worst of the kind, that
I am obliged to say, "No fool, ladies, at all, no kind of fool, whether
a mad fool or a sober fool, a wise fool or a silly fool; take anything
but a fool; nay, be anything, be even an old maid, the worst of nature's
curses, rather than take up with a fool."

But to leave this awhile, for I shall have occasion to speak of it
again; my case was particularly hard, for I had a variety of foolish
things complicated in this unhappy match.

First, and which I must confess is very unsufferable, he was a conceited
fool, _tout opiniatre_; everything he said was right, was best, and was
to the purpose, whoever was in company, and whatever was advanced by
others, though with the greatest modesty imaginable. And yet, when he
came to defend what he had said by argument and reason, he would do it
so weakly, so emptily, and so nothing to the purpose, that it was enough
to make anybody that heard him sick and ashamed of him.

Secondly, he was positive and obstinate, and the most positive in the
most simple and inconsistent things, such as were intolerable to bear.

These two articles, if there had been no more, qualified him to be a
most unbearable creature for a husband; and so it may be supposed at
first sight what a kind of life I led with him. However, I did as well
as I could, and held my tongue, which was the only victory I gained over
him; for when he would talk after his own empty rattling way with me,
and I would not answer, or enter into discourse with him on the point he
was upon, he would rise up in the greatest passion imaginable, and go
away, which was the cheapest way I had to be delivered.

I could enlarge here much upon the method I took to make my life
passable and easy with the most incorrigible temper in the world; but it
is too long, and the articles too trifling. I shall mention some of them
as the circumstances I am to relate shall necessarily bring them in.

After I had been married about four years, my own father died, my mother
having been dead before. He liked my match so ill, and saw so little
room to be satisfied with the conduct of my husband, that though he left
me five thousand livres, a