ANTHONY: Let us therefore, cousin, consider an example or two,
for thereby shall we better perceive it.
There was here in Buda in King Ladilaus' days, a good poor honest
man's wife. This woman was so fiendish that the devil, perceiving
her nature, put her in the mind that she should anger her husband
so sore that she might give him occasion to kill her, and then
should he be hanged because of her.
VINCENT: This was a strange temptation indeed! What the devil
should she be the better then?
ANTHONY: Nothing, but that it eased her shrewish stomach
beforehand, to think that her husband should be hanged afterward.
And peradventure, if you look about the world and consider it
well, you shall find more such stomachs than a few. Have you never
heard a furious body plainly say that, to see such-and-such man
have a mischief, he would with good will be content to lie as long
in hell as God liveth in heaven?
VINCENT: Forsooth, and some such have I heard.
ANTHONY: This mind of his was not much less mad than hers, but
rather perhaps the more mad of the twain. For the woman
peradventure did not cast so far peril therein.
But to tell you now to what good pass her charitable purpose came:
As her husband (the man was a carpenter) stood hewing with his
chip axe upon a piece of timber, she began after her old guise to
revile him so that he waxed wroth at last, and bade her get
herself in or he would lay the helm of his axe about her back.
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