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By Root 1010 0

refers to you; now it is time for you to hear something that has to do with me, and if it takes a long time, forgive me, but it is demanded by the labyrinth into which you have walked and from which you wish me to free you. You consider me your friend, yet you wish to take my honor, which is counter to all friendship; not only that, but you want me to try to take yours. It is clear that you want to take mine, for when Camila sees me wooing her, as you are asking me to do, surely she will look upon me as a man without honor or worth because I am attempting and doing something so far removed from the obligations I have as the man I am, and as your friend. There is no doubt that you want me to take your honor, for when Camila sees me wooing her, she will think that I saw in her some looseness of behavior that gave me the audacity to reveal my evil desire, and thinking herself dishonored, her dishonor affects you, for you are part of her. For this reason people commonly say that the husband of an adulterous woman, even though he has no knowledge of wife’s adultery and has given her no reason to be what she should not be, and it was not in his power to prevent his misfortune for he was neither negligent nor careless, yet despite all this he is called and characterized by base names that revile him, and in a certain sense those who know of his wife’s wickedness look at him with scornful rather than compassionate eyes, even though responsibility for his difficulties lies not with him but with the desires of his unvirtuous wife.

But I want to tell you why it is reasonable and just for the husband of an immodest woman to be dishonored, even if he does not know about her lack of virtue, and is not responsible for it, and has not been a party to it or given her reason to be unchaste. And do not grow weary of listening to me; everything will redound to your benefit. When God created our first father in the Earthly Paradise, Holy Scripture says that God put Adam to sleep, and as he slept He took a rib out of his left side and from it He formed our mother Eve; when Adam awoke and saw her, he said: ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,’ and God said: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ That was when the divine sacrament of marriage was established, with bonds so strong that death alone can undo them. And this miraculous sacrament is so strong and powerful that it makes one flesh of two different people, and in virtuous spouses it does even more, for although they have two souls, they have only one will. And from this it follows that since the flesh of the wife is one with the flesh of the husband, any stain that besmirches her, or any defect that appears in her, redounds to the flesh of the husband even if he has not given her, as I have said, any reason for her wickedness. Just as discomfort in the foot or any other member of the body is felt throughout the entire body because it is all one flesh, and the head feels the ankle’s pain although it has not caused it, so the husband participates in his wife’s dishonor because he is one with her. And since honors and dishonors in this world are all born of flesh and blood, and those of the un-chaste woman are of this kind, it is unavoidable that the husband is party to them and is considered dishonored even if he has no knowledge of them.

Therefore consider, Anselmo, the danger in which you place yourself by wanting to disturb the tranquility in which your virtuous wife lives; think of how, because of a futile and rash inquisitiveness, you wish to disturb the humors that now rest tranquilly in the bosom of your chaste wife; be aware that what you may gain is little, and what you may lose is so great that I will not even mention it because I lack the words to describe it. But if everything I have said is not enough to dissuade you from your evil purpose, then you can find another instrument for your dishonor and misfortune, for I do not intend to be that instrument, even if I lose your friendship, which