The
beautiful young wife of an old man sends back the presents and letters
of a youthful lover, in the firm resolve to keep her honour (onesta).
'But she rejoiced in the love of the youth for his great excellence;
and she perceived that a noble woman may love a man of merit without
loss to her honour.' But the way is short from such a distinction to a
complete surrender.
The latter seems indeed as good as justified when there is
unfaithfulness on the part of the husband. The woman, conscious of her
own dignity, feels this not only as a pain, but also as a humiliation
and deceit, and sets to work, often with the calmest consciousness of
what she is about, to devise the vengeance which the husband deserves.
Her tact must decide as to the measure of punishment which is suited to
the particular case. The deepest wound, for example, may prepare the
way for a reconciliation and a peaceful life in the future, if only it
remain secret. The novelists, who themselves undergo such experiences
or invent them according to the spirit of the age, are full of
admiration when the vengeance is skillfully adapted to the particular
case, in fact, when it is a work of art. As a matter of course, the
husband never at bottom recognizes this right of retaliation, and only
submits to it from fear or prudence. Where these motives are absent,
where his wife's unfaithfulness exposes him or may expose him to the
derision of outsiders, the affair becomes tragical, and not seldom ends
in murder or other vengeance of a violent sort.
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